NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This is a quarterly magazine that promotes the poetry of survivors of mental distress. It is published by Survivors' Poetry, a national literature and performance organisation that enables survivors to participate in writing or performance training workshops as well as publishing and performances nationwide. This issue contains long reviews of survivors' poetry collections WE HAVE COME THROUGH and TEN RUSSIAN POETS: SURVIVING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY as well as shorter reviews, information and comment and four pages of poetry by survivors themselves. The poems all have an intense quality of trying to engage the reader with the realism of surviving or trying to survive all kinds of mental distress. What comes through clearly in this collection is the strength of the survivors, their ability to find humour and hope in otherwise distressing circumstances or simply the strength to describe their unhappiness honestly. So we can rejoice with Steve Lyons

	I still call it serendipity: she still thinks it's coincidental,
	we found love in the psycho ward after both of us went mental.

	Shine your torch into my eyes
	You won't reach the darkness
	Hiding there
	Behind my stare
	Of happiness.

This is an interim edition in which, according to Interim Manager Simon Jenner, everything is new. His editorial provides an update on recent funding, a new Letters to the Editor section, and new outreach venues.

The magazine itself has a central poetry section, a broadsheet of twenty poems, but the major part of the magazine is devoted to quality in depth reviews.

Simon Jenner reviews Geoffrey Hill's THE ORCHARDS OF SYON, Alan Morrison reviews the selected poems of Nicholas Lafitte, NEAR CALVARY (The Many Press). There is an interesting page by David Miller on the state or unstate of the English language prose poem, which also provides a useful list of collections, in particular by Rosmarie Waldrop as well as Stride editions of prose poetry; James Fergusen's humourously written in-depth reviews on Jeremy Reed are well worth reading.

What I particularly liked was the double review of The EMLIT Project (European Minority Languages in Translation), published by Brunel UP with a CD as well.

This is a mammoth 500 page volume of poetry in 19 minority languages translated into English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. So it is mind-stretching in many ways. Firstly, it makes us sit up and realise that reading only one review about anything is an unhealthily blinkered approach. In fact both David Hart and Barry Tebb appreciate the volume, but in very different ways. David Hart has trouble with the print and dislikes the cover; Barry Tebb plunges in with gushing enthusiasm. Hart questions the ability of single poems to represent whole cultures. Tebb tackles the problem of what is gained or lost in translation though sometimes I am left wondering which is the original:

...if you take the English language text of a poem and work through the translations the original is hugely enriched by the additional rhetoric and resonance each language adds...

a gesture of salutation and exaltation which this book triggers

Poetry Express is a quarterly publication produced by Survivors' Poetry. This issue, the twentieth, has a new, expanded format, that James Fergusson expresses some doubts about in his editorial, whilst hoping that it moves along the way to where he wants the publication to be. I found reviewing it, that the publication worked beautifully, containing a great variety of articles and poetry that all however converge on the theme of mental health and well-being.

Paul Murphy's long article DIE VERGANGENHEIT is a fascinating account of the writer's time in Emmendingen, Germany, a place known to the writers of guidebooks only for its psychiatric hospital. However as this article shows, it is an area rich in social and cultural history with links to Goethe and other well known German cultural figures. The article ranges over poetry, music, cinema, language and relations between different communities, offering an intriguing insight into this area. However there was an odd tendency for paragraphs to be printed out of order and the article itself seems to fade away at the end.

In NUMBERLESS CALVARIES, Cristina Viti gives us a detailed profile of the Italian poet Dino Campana, who had a history of treatement in psychiatric institutions. There is also a good selection of his poetry as translated by Cristina Viti, giving a flavour of his mystical and beautiful work.

New for this issue is a feature on an individual Survivors' Poetry Group, in this case Stevenage Survivors. Roy Birch outlines the history of the group, their work in hospitals, drug treatment clinics and community centres. This is followed by a selection of poems from group members. The poetry is powerful, as this excerpt from BESEECHING DEATH by Earl Irish:

	But look what I ain't a God or power tool
	I spill blood
	Like a river drying from the heart
	Tell me friend is this the end or
	the turning point

	My pen is poised on the edge
	of the unsayable.
	When I cry
	please
	look into my eyes.

	Words will not come. They drag themselves
	reluctantly forward, fearing the light
	or hide, priest holed and trembling for fear
	of discovery. Boldness eludes them.

Ten steps away from Morley the pain and sadness swept away like a breeze passing through me, and I was so uplifted as I walked up the steps into the building to my home — writing itself. The nervous breakdown then wasn't central to my life as I had thought. The course really was better than a holiday. ...... Most of all, I now take myself and writing more seriously and have taken all my writing out of the recesses of the cupboards and corners at home and made myself a writing corner.

Poetry Express is a delight to read, containing so much variety in theme and style, thought provoking and moving. The contents all fit into a very important theme without either being constrained by this theme or ever appearing to preach. The publication fulfils a number of important roles in highlighting the important part writing can play in mental health services and showcasing the work of Survivors' Poetry and of individual poets.