In reply to DK:

RL: What would you do instead of the 'special issue'?  Constructive
criticism is what's needed here, not just bottle-lobbing.  I'm disappointed
to see you play 'the race card'  - so easy to do and what those who
criticise eg the Picador list, Poetry Review, SO'B's The Deregulated Muse
and, indeed, The New Poetry won't do is name those black poets who have been
missed out.  I'm sure there are some, but who?  You talk about black writing
as if it were one specific type in a 'range' of poetries!  Black poets hate
being missed out, but they also hate being lumped together because of their
colour.  There's a five and a half page poem by Fred d'Aguiar in the latest
Review among work by other non-white poets.  Six non-white poets had work in
the last issue.  Did you actually check the thing, or were you just assuming
/ hoping your point would hold water?  Re Christina's introductory remarks,
well of course, she wasn't going to make a list of every type of poet and
poetry.

Peter Forbes's choice of poems is made largely from submissions - the Review
generally cannot afford to commission poems.  I don't think it is the
responsibility of the Review to be evenly 'representative' of all types of
poetry, which is different from being responsible to the members of the
Poetry Society, the people the magazine is primarily for (and paid for by).
There are so many specialist magazines.  I believe the Review should be
broad and broadening in a campaigning, pluralist fashion while keeping in
mind that most of its readers, for better or worse, have informed but fairly
conservative tastes.  You'd be pissed off, no doubt, if it ran six pages of
Pam Ayres or MC Jabber or pets haiku or readers' poems on Diana and Omagh.
The new 'International Brigade' issue contains a great diversity of work
from all around the Anglophone world, much of it difficult, most of it good.
However, when such an ambitious issue is done, membership does drop.

>DK: You can't have a Society claiming to be widely representative and at th
e
same time ask us to commiserate with an editor who's apparently constrained
to be the opposite. C'mon, which is it?


I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer given previously.  There is
no constraint, just consideration.  Do you really want representation by
dividing the pages equally among the number of types of poetry we could name
between us?  A genetically modified publication with no views, no taste?
Should we give Craig Charles, Paul Muldoon, Alison Funk and Bob Cobbing
equal coverage?  Is the Review the place for that fascinating article on
uses of the semi-colon in 'Fredy Neptune'?

>DK: The quality of reviewing has got worse. Reading  recent issues has been
like eavesdropping on meetings of a backscratching society.


And Mars Bars are getting smaller.  And time was you could leave yer door
unlocked round here.  Some of us are quite willing, now and then, to say we
like a book, and why; it's rarely backscratching.  It's always hard for
editors to get reviewers for some books / poets and there is always a small
store of bitter minor poets, has-beens and wannabes who will produce
slurping or envious reviews by rote (NB this is not aimed at you at all,
David).  There are always good and bad reviews / reviewers in the Review and
elsewhere.  BTW, the next Review will be full of reviewers who have never
appeared there before, or have never reviewed at all before.

I take it you love everything else about it and are still thrilled to be a
regular contributor!

Roddy




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