NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

PENNINE PLATFORM is similar to many small press publications: modest in size and unpretentious in its presentation. It could be that some readers of poetry imagine gloss and size to be a reliable indication of high-order art and craft; that such production values — in the print and paper sense — give magazines an exclusive right to excellence. These readers should take a look at PENNINE PLATFORM — a magazine brimful of very good poetry.

I remember the magazine when it was edited by Ken Smith and thought it good then. The current editor, Nicholas Bielby, has altered the format (marginally), has increased the number of pages and kept — mercifully — to the old price of £4.00 per copy.

The magazine has always published a mixture of well known and not so well known poets — known names such as Joan Sheridan Smith, Paul Groves, Mike Hoy, Edward Storey, etc., appear in this issue. I particularly liked Edward Storey's LETTER FROM THE ASYLUM — an imagined communication from John Clare to his sister; simple and moving (as Clare himself would have written it):

	Yet in our childhood we both felt
	the hours were never long enough.
	Fields were our pleasure and our school;
	you knew as many birds and flowers
	as I've been given credit for in all my work.

	It worries me to think that I was granted more
	than I deserved, while you took second-place,
	watching as I was doted on because
	my poetry achieved a curious fame.
	But, what of that, when all is said and done!

	I have visions,
	paint on cave walls
	truths that will overtake us.

	I saw the night air
	dance in the gleam
	of discovered fire.

	a house the house home to a man the man one-time fisherman
	thinks to time still both sea — and the turn of river-tides
	leagues even to within a couple of ticks

	and look a castle on sands alchemized to full-length looking glass
	by a tide just gone the bay blue through the sky

Bielby, in his editorial, rightly suggests that poetry is essentially an interactive art. A serious reader of PENNINE PLATFORM will not regret his or her part in that partnership.

PENNINE PLATFORM acknowledges the support of the Leeds Philosphical and Literary Society. The editorial begins

I have been asked, "What do editors look for in selecting poems?" Of course, I can only answer for myself. In the first place, I depend on my intuitive reactions. So, what are my intuitions based on? In general, intuitions are based on temperment and moral character, trained by education and reading. More specifically, you may infer my implicit criteria from the choices I make...

John Gilham is a lapsed ferroequinologist, prefering cycling, poetry and pub crawls and lives in York.

PENNINE PLATFORM is a model magazine in terms of its concerns to remind us that the UK has a fine record of achievement in genres like regional and local history. It can give some pointers on nurturing home grown talent. It is stylishly presented and well promoted and deserves to have a wide readership.

The magazine contains an editorial, 48 poems and several short reviews. Artwork is by Nicholas Bielby. In his editorial Bielby says,

We read the poets of the past or our contemporaries and feel sparked off by something we read, or feel emulation, or simply feel, 'I could do my own version of that,' or 'I'd like to try that technique out for myself.' We read other poets, in part, to have our minds expanded about possibilities we could exploit for ourselves. We make things our own by making them over into our own language or in terms of our own experiences.

On the other hand there are plenty of instances of work that repays further attention: Chris Hardy's THE RIVER ACHERON is a neat piece of work where the persona and companion follow the river for miles, but where

	We do not try to reach the spring,
	high above, where the peaks are grey and burnt,
	where no one has ever lived,
	except to hide from their enemies.

	I've an inkling you see:— a tarbooshed he-man
	urging the almond hands of an imp
	or a Lord Spiritual in specs,
	doubling hands, screech owls
	tethered to the chrysolite of his golden throne.

	I can't do painted tears or make-believe.
	The custard pies, the foam, the jokes — on me.

Whenever one or two poems falls flat, another one or two, or more, spring up in a row to overwhelm the impression of blandness, with their startlingly inventive metaphors and, occasionally, brilliant turns of phrase.