Matt. Screen Writer’s Guild makes sense. Thanks
Cameron Ok, you would rather publish good than bad poems in LM. And that, surely, is the editorial policy of every poetry magazine that has ever been broadcast. Thank heavens we don’t all agree on what is good. If the focus is on the poem, rather than the author, then should poems first be read by the editor with the author’s name redacted? I think this is the way many poetry competitions work, and some magazines also (eg Rattle?). If the focus is truly on the poem, then perhaps poems should be published anonymously too. Or at least the reader should have to make some extra clicks to reveal authorship. (And potted biographies might also be omitted, as George Simmers does in Snakeskin). On the other hand, the merit of a new poem is not always immediate, and if an editor knows it has been written by someone they trust, then the name may spur them on to a second longer look. And from this reader’s point of view, faced with a long contents list of poets, I tend to go first to the names I recognise and admire. And sometimes I then go to the names of those I consider dreadful or dull, just to confirm my prejudices. Names, clearly, are not irrelevant.
When you say
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“One of the things we are focused upon now more than ever is cutting out writers who we see us past their prime”,
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it does seem that you are more focussed on the author than the poem. Do you work through the slush pile discarding well known names in favour of new talent? A good poem is a good poem whether written earlier or later in a career. Shouldn’t promising poets jostle round the same counter as established poets? Or should they have special privileges? (I ask this as a genuine question.)
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By "past his prime" I mean submitting poems like "Die" to high-end journals instead of something like "Rain" or the other poems I heard are good.
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Do you think LM would be considered a particularly high-end journal by Don Paterson? The current issue seems to be the first time he has appeared there. You clarify that you wouldn’t publish “Die” because it is not a good poem. I think that it is good (and opinionated, thought provoking, odd, and deceptive.), but I also think it is not a poem. Don Paterson is much cleverer than I am, so I suspect there are things going on that I do not understand. Which is why I started this post.