NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

A5 stapled booklet with 40 pages of poems, articles, reviews and news. This particular poem called ELEGY by Cyril Wong is very powerful:

	The tulip died,
	A hand shivering
	Open, each petal

	A broken finger,
	Each tongue a leaf
	Swimming out

	From a paper throat.

There is also an article (close to my heart) on the links between science and poetry. I do not necessarily agree with all that James Aitchison proclaims in his article called POETRY AND SCIENCE but it is an interesting and well-written take on the topic, and he finishes by saying that:

And science today, as in the past, also proceeds by speculation, intuition, flashes of insight, dreams, and chance. The poet and the scientist have these means of discovery in common because they share the same functions of mind.

	Mycologists hunt DNA
	in fungi cells on plates of agar —
	from children who tear their toys apart,
	they're not removed so very far

This issue has an attractive paperback format, including cover graphic of a cockerel that matches the title of the booklet.

In the editorial, Richard Livermore meditates on the subject of critical strategies in poetry and whether or not they are creative. He says,

A good poet must learn to have a good critical sense, but one which unlike the critic's, is recessive rather than dominant.

	Great Hunger and the black years,

	My father used a fox's brush
	to spook the horse of a ruling girl;
	his father had to thrash him.

Shaped of air and star they're torcs.

. . . that myth and folklore became firmly established as reputable subjects of study.

Shorter poems from Morgan Kenny and Dedwydd Jones follow. Geoff Tomlinson has three poems whose ultimate meaning may elude us, objects and people are interesting primarily as a source of imagined meanings. Places are endowed with cultural or fictional meanings — LAST NIGHT, WASP NEST, GROWTH POINTS — highlight the comedy of trying to imagine some purpose in our activities. Thus people who set out to look for meaning in the wind will find that

	No subtle mute
	Can blunt the shrieking's edge;
	No noble Harmonies
	Conceal the howl of pain.

	poses a problem — like Iraq

	Possibly something should be done about it.

	And where we were is not where we are now
	Or will be when we grow back to our prime.

Poems by Paul Murphy are AT DACHAU, a prose poem THE INNOCENT PEOPLE and TWELVE WOODCUTS BY DERYCK. Murphy portrays the world in turns of patterns with some wider intention and meaning in life. There is a kind of interlocking between the three poems and, although they assume different forms, they form an organic whole. There is an evenness in mood in these meditations, though drama sometimes appears in powerfully understated details, as in THE INNOCENT PEOPLE:

	There is strength and there is nothing.  Strength is all.  What about Adolf.

We only became the species we are by questioning the world around us and each other. Furthermore, no good poet can do without a well developed critical sense.

Deborah Maudlin's poems may seem light and insubstantial at first, but it is worth taking time with them and tracing the weave of the threads. There are moments that are wonderful, the opening gambit, for example:

	Her feet were planted firmly
	rooted into the northern soil,
	so heavy sometimes she forgot how to dream!

	place them in a gilded cage.

	Runs through the night,

	Breaks down the paper doors of all
	institutions, demanding competence.

There are also a series of quotes, a review, an advertisement for LOVEBITES by Christopher Barnes and a reader's response to the latter.

All in all, a densely packed little booklet, with plenty to interest most people.

An excellent issue of this magazine, with every page worth reading. True, it is rather dominated by the editor, Richard Livermore, who contributes 15 pages (out of 36). But he writes well, and intelligently, and interestingly. He is surely correct to argue, in his essay POLITICS AND THE ARTS, that we need to reappraise the legacy of Marx shorn of the excess baggage loaded on it by the Russian Revolution and the Soviet state. And also correct to argue that the total politicisation of art would be a disaster. I am less convinced, however, by Livermore's enthusiastic review of SHIBBOLETH, an unpublished novel by Al Roy. Judging by the quoted extracts and summary, it is well unpublished. And anyway, do we really need this new critical form — reviews of unpublished work?

Meanwhile Al Roy himself contributes an essay arguing that the young of today are brainwashed into capitalist consumerist conformity with even more ruthless efficiency than was used to brainwash the Hitler Youth. He has a point — but it is exaggerated. There is far more doubt, dissent, questioning and scepticism in young people today than Roy allows for.

The remaining essay is a short piece by Simon Zonenblick arguing that it is a zoological crime that a beautiful butterfly of Sarawak is named after a British imperialist. Fair enough, but if Zonenblick feels so passionately about this, he ought to have checked his facts. Sarawak is not an island, the butterfly in question is not called "Rajah Brooke's Bird Wing" but "Rajah Brooke's Birdwing," and the history of Sarawak is much more complex than Zonenblick's oversimplified version.

And so to the poetry, almost 50 per cent of the content. It is by Maureen McManus, Annemarie Cooper, John Halladay, Sally Evans, Malcolm Currie, Walter Perrie and Elmer Churchill. The standard is exceptionally high for a small magazine like this, so credit to the discernment of Richard Livermore, who admits that when he chooses poetry for the magazine "there has to be something about the poems that I like." I think we shall hear a lot more from these poets — certainly Sally Evans and maybe some of the others too.

I'm happy to give this magazine an extra gold star. However, no one is perfect. When Richard Livermore says in his editorial that this is the anti-capitalist issue, because "there are too essays on that theme," I do not think he means there are essays on other themes as well. I think he means there are two essays on the theme.