Editorial
Sitting on my desk is a pile of slim volumes of poetry, all sent by authors and publishers who are under the false impression that The Interpreter’s House does reviews. I keep meaning to have a look at them but keep putting it off. There were fifteen of them at the last count. My depression deepens.
Philip Sidney wrote some four hundred years ago that a poet entices readers with ‘a medicine of cherries’. ‘He beginneth not with obscure definitions .... but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion’, with ‘a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner’. Not any more, I fear, especially as so much modern poetry is wilfully obscure. The books keep being published and few people buy them (and there are hundreds more who would like to publish a book and can’t). Perhaps we should accept that there is now much more being written than any one person can read.
But how are we to know, without reading them all, which poets are really good? Well, we could listen to the poetry pundits, who, I see, have just selected a New Generation. ‘Head-hunters’ will tell us which of them are ‘rising stars’, to use a couple more clichés. However, you may not agree. To put it tactfully, there is not such a very wide gap between the few poets whose names are all over the place and who carry off the big prizes, and the many poets who beaver away in obscurity. So editors and publishers bear a heavy responsibility.
I will probably glance at the books some time, and no doubt find some good poems. Then I’ll keep a few, give away a few more and donate the rest to a good cause, like Second Light. I will, however, always give my full attention to work which is sent to me for possible publication. In small quantities, please.
October 2004
Page(s) 1
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The