 Poet in the Round 18 Blackbridge Lane Horsham West Sussex RH12 1RP UK £4.50 [£6 overseas] subscriptions: 4 issues £17 [£23 overseas] Before commenting on this review please read the FAQ page Home page Notes for publishers Want to be a reviewer? Anthologies. Books. Audio. Magazines. Software. Video. Artefacts. Web design by Gerald England This page last updated: 10th July 2004. |
Poet in the Round #2 | |
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The second issue of POET IN THE ROUND, edited by Olivia Mannion-Daniels comes as a complete surprise. It is extremely well presented; glossy, beautifully illustrated, bulkier even than The Rialto and, seemingly, without that magazine's Arts Council funding. So, good luck to it; although nothing in the readers' subscription details mentions how often it will appear. Olivia Manning-Daniels, in her lively editorial, quotes both Robert Frost and Seamus Heaney: the former tells us that a poem should start with delight and end in wisdom.Well... yes and no. What's wrong with it beginning and ending in delight? I'm more inclined to Seamus Heaney's dictum (as far as writing the stuff is concerned), that within the writing process itself the movement is from delight to wisdom;which implies the essential serendipity, restrained excitement in writing a poem. That is, not knowing exactly what it will show, say — where it will go (five times out of ten, in the wastepaper basket). Ms Manning-Daniels has brought in these big guns as counterpoint to the myriad of editors and poets who have been invited to answer the question: Are poets responsible for the decline in poetry sales?I quote from just one of these letters (from Julie Lumsden): Poets must write what they wish, in the style they have chosen; they are responsible to no one.I would add: you can write only what you can write (whatever your ambitions) and hope for the best. A friend of mine gave me a copy of a letter she had received from Philip Larkin, in which he says that the only way to find out whether what you have written interests or pleases someone else is to send it to the magazine that prints the kinds of poems you like best— no arguing with that; for to send them to a publication that doesn't, is to court frustration and eventual disillusion (however high-minded you may be). And, of course, you may have to admit — using a tennis analogy — that whilst it is reasonable to play tennis for one's own amusement, it is not reasonable to expect to play at Wimbledon. Let us hope that editors are good at selecting the Wimbledon players and not the others for their pages and — having done so — do their best to persuade a limited public (it always has been) to buy them. End of story? Has Ms Mannion-Daniels selected Wimbledon players? Yes, in the main, she has. There are one or two who would be better perhaps flashing their shorts in a good local club, and one or two more whose dull playing wouldn't get them past the first round. I like a lot of the poems in this issue: WITTGENSTEIN MINOR by John Andrews is one of them. You probably haven't heard much about me — My elder brother's the one with the brain. s a child I could stare at the clouds for hours; It was important for him to understand rain. ... I used to think how good it would be To choose the instruments in our heads. Now I believe it is better by far To write the music that they play, instead.How apposite. POET IN THE ROUND is a pleasure to handle; many of the poems are a pleasure to read; and the beautiful pen and ink nudes by Rosy Mayhew are, each one, a pleasure. In AN AUDIENCE WITH HENRY SHUKMAN (talking to the Editor), among a number of his perceptive thoughts, I was drawn to: if you've got the heart of a poet you just want to read poetry or find the poetry that you love and drink it up and you will carry on doing that forever and ever. I wish the editor a long and successful publishing life. | ||
| reviewer: Michael Bangerter. |