[Sylvia Fairley]

Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll

To paraphrase Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, they're probably not recommending the comps, just pointing them out.

Did they have comps in Thomas More's day?! I thought Vicky had been around a long time...

[Brian Allgar]

The web page specifies two different closing dates, one of which was 14th February. I wrote to them for clarification, and they confirmed that the correct date is 29th February.

[Michael Cantor]

I can't recall when I've seen more fuss made over such a clearly amateur endeavor since the time - about three years ago - when everybody was doing handstands about the announcement of a new magazine, and I googled the founder and publisher, and discovered he was fifteen years old. I don't know about you guys, but there are far more decent and established (and form friendly, or at least form-tolerant) magazines out there than I have poems or time to cover. Why worry about something started by a non-poet which gives every sign of being non-poetical?

[John Whitworth]

Don't forget Rimbaud was fifteen when he wrote his best poems. I rather like the cut of her jib. She is, as you rghtly say, no poet, but then that is true of many editors (the ones who don't print my stuff.

Incidentally, the Speccie printed a longish, incoherent (natch) poem by Jory Graham in the front half. O me miserum as the Romans were wont to say.

[Michael Cantor]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

She is, as you rghtly say, no poet, but then that is true of many editors

Really? Which ones, beyond possibly a few poetry-and-prose contest editors? This is not a scientific survey exactly, but I took a look at where I submit my stuff, and as far as I know virtually everybody who makes the decision is a poet.

[John Whitworth]

Peter Fobes, who edited Poetry Review very well for many years and printed reams of Whitworth was no poet and the editor of PN Review, Michael Somebody or other, doesn't write poetry either. I will fill the name in when I remember it.

[Ann Drysdale]

Peter Forbes may be a science writer rather than a poet per se, but he edited the anthology Scanning the Century which relates history to poetry in a way that makes it one of the best such books of recent years.

However, if you mean Michael Schmidt, he not only writes poetry and publishes poetry (Carcanet) but is Professor of Poetry at Glasgow and writer in residence at one of the Cambridge colleges.
.

[John Whitworth]

Peter Forbes's anthology is indeed splendid, containing as it does, two splendid poems by me. But he wrote no poems of his own. Michael Schmidt, so he does but he shouldn't. Terrible stuff, formless, preachy, like very bad prose. But he's a good editor. John Jones was the Oxford Professor of Poetry without writing any poetry except one bawdy limerick. Maurice Bowra, Christopher Ricks and A.C. Bradley were distinguished Oxford Professors of Poetry. I don't think any of them wrote an actual poem.

Patricia Oxley, who has edited Acumen splendidly since the Flood, writes no poetry, though her husband William does.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Why worry about something started by a non-poet which gives every sign of being non-poetical?

Michael, to answer your question succintly: a hundred quid.