While we're on the subject of literature subsidized by the government for the purpose of furthering an ideological agenda, I'd like to recommend Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan's latest novel.

Duncan

Suppose I’m seriously put off by some editor’s political views and public statements, and I decide on that basis not to submit my poems to his or her magazine. You might respond to that decision in a number of different ways.

You might applaud me for taking a principled stand and refusing to lend the luster of my name and reputation to that villain’s journal.

You might think that I really need to get over myself, that I’m doing nothing more noble than defining the boundaries of my personal comfort zone -- perfectly OK, but not especially praiseworthy.

You might take the position that my boycott of the journal is pointless and irrelevant, that publishing my poems there would not taint me in any way, and would not amount to an endorsement of the editor’s views.

Whatever your assessment of my decision -- admirable, self-important, reasonable, silly -- you probably would not think I was doing something morally wrong.

Now suppose I’m a journal editor as well as a poet. I decree that not only will I not publish my poems in Editor X’s journal, I will refuse to consider submissions from anybody who does. At this point, you might conclude that I’ve crossed some sort of moral line.

Keith is the editor in chief of Q, so he is Les' boss.

[Never mind]

Actually, we probably would never know. Unless you advertised it. And then—?

;)

Politics and Poetry
 

The disturbance we hear is Paul Stevens rolling over in his grave.

-o-

Paul certainly did not like Quadrant. However.....

Paul held strong views and was certainly not backward in expressing them. However, when it came to editing his journals he judged the poem, not the poet. I hope I will always live up to his example.

You know, the more I think about this, the sillier the panic-mongering seems. In the first place, we're talking about some journal that has explicitly left-leaning editorial tastes saying, in essence, that those who publish in a particularly right-wing magazine should submit their work elsewhere. Perhaps Minter did it crudely, but I can't think of anyone who writes columns for The Nation and The National Review simultaneously. Minter is not (and I've read the entirety of the appropriate Facebook thread) calling for a general boycott of said poets. Here's the key bit for me:

The journal with which I'm associated is not political--certainly not in the way Overland is--but I can see where he's coming from in the context of his own journal, and the second quoted paragraph is worthy of rereading if one leans left but submits right.

This, for me, seems ludicrous. As if publishing in his journal rather than Quadrant will actually have any effect on global warming or what happened in the past in Australia. Any effect whatsoever. Does having a "higher-order moral fibre" mean, well, blabbering on to no effect whatsoever as long as the words sound pretty?