Like Brighton rock, the name MICHAEL SCHMIDT is embedded in PNR whenever you bite it. The name is the quality mark, from the editorial in issue 2 of Poetry Nation, in 1974 (his name was absent from no. 1), to issue 271 of PNR in 2023. Issue 6 in 1976 announces a new format, new frequency and that ‘we’ will be joined by new editors, Donald Davie and C.H. Sisson: the editorials will be ‘unsigned’. So in 1977 there is a whole new gang: the General Editor, the new editors plus Brian Cox, James Atlas as American Editor and Val Warner as Assistant Editor. Soon the editors decide to sign their editorials, taking it in turn to lay down gauntlets. In 1979 the trio of Schmidt, always the General, Davie and Sisson are unsupported for a while; co-ordinating editors come and go throughout the magazine’s history. The editorial that caught my eye in the Archive is Sisson’s from 5:5: ‘One of my worries about this magazine is that it is not doing enough for the suppression of what is called poetry’ (my italics). The cover acquires an illustration in 1980. By 6:6 (but the numbering doesn’t settle reliably until a few years later), Michael is apologising for its late appearance, citing the ‘hundreds of letters’ received in the wake of the special issue, Crisis for Cranmer and King James, guest-edited by David Martin. The cover changes back to text only.

On they go, the indomitable three, producing another special issue in 1983. This one features photographs of ‘The Battle of Little Sparta’, another kind of ...