NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This London-based independent magazine has created and nurtured its own community of interest. In its ROUNDABOUT section, we are told about MANIFOLD's recent poetry evening 'Human Rights and Human Wrongs' on behalf of the Anglo-Belarusian Society, and news of MANIFOLD poets is reported from their prize-winnings to wedding anniversaries.

MANIFOLD makes a stand for its values; the editorial discusses the way poetry competitions have developed into commercial enterprises with a passing resemblance to subsidy publishing.

In addition to publishing a variety of poems, essays, and translations, MANIFOLD itself runs free competitions on set themes and poetic forms, challenging and educating its readers and writers rather than commercially exploiting them .

In this issue, many of the poems have a millennial theme exploring time, historical place and incident; in Gerald England's SONNET FOR A LOST ROMAN ROAD the past haunts the present landscape:

	this route no longer used
	Under the land of some Saxon serf
	Who ploughed his fields without a tear
	For all the history he had seduced.

Gillian Bence-Jones' RELATIVE is brief and humourous:

	Time may be swift,
	time may be fleeting, 
	time may just drift ...
	but not at a meeting. 

The book and magazine reviews were wide-ranging and helpful; the CORRIGENDA pages are a great idea, providing space for the reprinting of poems which have suffered major misprints elsewhere.

MANIFOLD engages its readers/subscribers in dialogue with new poetry; it acts as a forum for information and discussion as well as publication for writers and readers. If you haven't come across it, give it a try; perhaps MANIFOLD will be a community of interest to you.

According to the editorial, this issue completes the main thrust of the drive to relaunch the magazine, but they are still trying to trace some former subscribers from the 60s.

It is good to see that the magazine supports only "no-fee" competitions. News, correspondance, reviews of events and art exhibitions give the magazine a distinctive feel.

There is a variety of work published including some French poetry and even a country dance complete with music. My favourite pieces from this issue are Paulo da Costa's delightful free-flowing prose-poem and RUSSIAN ELEGY by Edward Lucie-Smith:

	Your love affairs
	Were experimental fictions
	...

		... the strong man
	With the mad wife

	You folded him in your nightgown
	When you woke next morning
	You were three in a bed.

A ruby cover for their Ruby Anniversary. Congratulations to MANIFOLD on surviving 40 years and 40 issues! It's no mean feat in the competitive world of independent publishing.

As well as producing a fine selection of poetry, the strength of this publication comes via its supportive network. London-based, there appears to be a good social set-up here.

This issue appropriately announces the Competition Results and thus showcases the best of the bunch. The winner of the 'VICTORIANA' Competition was EARTHQUAKE by Barbara Daniels, a sonnet to Darwin.

Perhaps the most visually exciting poetry was in the form of the TETRACTID RING COMPETITION winning entries. The challenge was to produce a "ring" of four tetractides, based on a well-accepted "foursome". The winning STAYMAN by Bob Newman was an ingenious little construction based on the four card suits.

Space is given to reviews, guidelines for submissions, and further competitions. There is a LETTERS AND QUERIES page. One writer points out that a reviewer should not give away the surprise ending of a poem. Comment duly noted!

Maybe because they're seasonal, but my own personal highlights were reading the rather splendid winter-themed poems at the beginning of the collection. I'll leave you with the cool and delicious BREATH by Shireen Shaikh:

	nothing speaks more
	than ice and air
	if absence could.
	nothing speaks all through winter
	until, lost and jagged,
	a rib of pain touches
	the soft redress of the word.

Packed with poems, news of London-based events plus Manifold Voices readings, letters, reviews that focus on the favourable without over-praising and Manifold competitions. Keenly emphasises that potential contributors are not required to take out a subscription but points out subscribers have advantages — they can send double the amount of entries to competitions and have a chance of working towards a Manifold-published chapbook of their own work. Hence encouraging the community feel important to MANIFOLD. There is also a Corrigenda section for reprinting poems previously published with errors — an editorial comment states,

we are currently giving serious consideration to the possibility of eliminating the need for proofs by scanning poets' own MSS directly into the computer. This, however, would put the onus on the poets to submit their work with typographical or punctuation errors — which, at present is by no means the case.

	...The source of hope, you might say, responding
	to an image in the air, something inspired.
	My idea of an echo of a form.
	It filled me and it emptied me at once.

	...Like women, find their place.
 
	Their menfolk call, they serve the meal,
	Warm, fragrant rice, hot meat.
	One brother winces at the knife,
	And finds he cannot eat.
	The women in the kitchen mourn
	His teenage, foreign wife,
	Who last night found the way to take
	Her freedom and her life.

the tragedy that reveals itself at the end of the poem would have had more impact if it remained slightly elusive, at the back of the poem, as it is at the back of the events the author is describing. It is powerful and shocking, but detracts a little from the evocative mood that has earlier been created...

I must squeeze a few lines for congratulations to some notable achievements in the MANIFOLD family...

	...We have a bag of chocolate-creams; we play
	The Emigration Game: England, if brown;
	Or, if the centre's white, we must stay here;
	If yellow, it's Australia. Snow falls down...
 
	...
 
	From consulate to consulate her steps
	Inscribe petitions. Soon the sweets are all gone.
	The March comes, and invaders bar all routes:
	Yet leave no trace of her when they move on;
 
	Their footsteps beating time and bearing down.

The above poem, first published in The Observer, is reprinted here to mark an auspicious occasion. The 2003 New Year’s Honours List included a knighthood for Nicholas Winton in recognition his work in the period just prior to World War II, in arranging the evacuation to the U.K. of Jewish children from countries incorporated into, or soon-to-be incorporated into, Hitler’s Third Reich. He was joined in his efforts by Trevor Chadwick. The last envoy sent England from Prague by Mr Chadwick before the Nazis arrived included certain Gerda Mayer. While offering Sir Nicholas our heartiest congratulations, we should like to pay tribute to all those who took part in this great humanitarian endeavour, and particularly to Trevor Chadwick for giving England such a fine poet as Gerda. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism for conferring postumous knighthoods