Before lockdown he walked every day back and forth to the office. When the keys to Cross Street were made redundant and the doors to a gymnasium next to home barred too, this long-time editor of PNR was never going to stand still.  

But let us row back a little.

Michael Schmidt in the editorial for summer 2020’s PNR 254 recalls another editor’s discovery. When preparing ‘Jubilee in Letters’ in 2019 to celebrate Carcanet’s half century of book publishing, Robyn Marsack noticed that archive correspondence about Eavan Boland was brief, whereas this poet wrote ‘with feeling and generosity’ about others’ work. Michael notes that Boland’s influence extended far beyond the forty-seven contributions ‘made in her own voice’. And that he ‘cannot say how many times she is present by suggestion or simply by her example, which persists’.

The persistent space Michael has made for an array of voices that have come and gone and come again in a hemi-century of PNR since 1973 – whether long or short or shaped form poem, feature, review, or letter – is capacious. And we must not forget the voices that have been engendered through these varied presentations.

Whenever I read Michael’s words I hear the undulations and emphases of his own voice even as he is quoting other voices. I sense the imbued emotions and politics, an always bubbling energy in that love of the variety of poetic perspectives. I enjoy the givens of his sharp wit. Michael is in the room with me, presenting to me directly ...