This review is taken from PN Review 108, Volume 22 Number 4, March - April 1996.
on Clark, Wallace, Jenkins, Conran, Ransford
John Ennis, Heinrich Heine, Salvador Espriu, Charles Tomlinson, Peter Bland, Carole Satyamurti, Andrew Motion, Michael Longley, David Scott, Michael Longley, John Riley, Mark Strand, Denise Riley, John Montague, Clive Wilmer, Matthew Sweeney, Peter Abbs, George MacBeth, W.S. Graham, Francis Ponge, Douglas Clark, David Gascoyne, Christine Evans, Derek Mahon, Frederick Seidel, Geoff Page, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Hofmann, Ruth Bidgood, Kirkpatrick Dobie, Vicki Raymond, David Malouf, E.J. Scovell, Jean Garrigue, Fleur Adcock, Kenneth Koch, Bernard O'Donoghue, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, James Schuyler, Lee Harwood, David Wright, Vivian Smith, Kathleen Raine, Hugo Williams, David Harsent, Michael Hamburger, Mark O'Connor, Les A. Murray, Charles Johnston, Fleur Adcock, Philip Levine, Galway Kinnell, Michael Riviere, Lawrence Lerner, Thomas Blackburn, D.M. Thomas, Fleur Adcock, John Montague, P.J. Kavanagh, David Holbrook, John Silkin, Günter Grass, Elizabeth Jennings, Patricia Beer, Peter Sansom, Jaan Kaplinski, Vladimir Khodasevich, Jack Clemo, Frank Koenegracht, Jamie McKendrick, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jean Bleakney, William Plomer, Colette Bryce, Kathleen Jamie, Selected Poems
Naomi Wallace, To Dance a Stony Field
Mike Jenkins, This House My Ghetto
Tony Conran, All Hallows: Symphony in 3 Movements
Tessa Ransford, Medusa Dozen
DOUGLAS CLARK, Selected Poems (Benjamin Press) £8.00
NAOMI WALLACE, To Dance a Stony Field (Peterloo) £6.95
MIKE JENKINS, This House My Ghetto (Seren) £5.95
TONY CONRAN, All Hallows: Symphony in 3 Movements (Gomer) £4.50
TESSA RANSFORD, Medusa Dozen (The Ramsay Head Press) £6.50
With so much excellent technology available, any small press enterprise can tum out productions as smart as any multinational publisher. This serves Douglas Clark well in his Selected Poems, but he is let down by his aggrandising presentations of himself as Artist as Hero-Magician. It will be difficult for some readers to take his epic angst seriously:
and he does himself no favours by describing his own collection as 'more of a vanity production'. This alone will put off any readers he deserves; a shame when he can write such successful poems as 'The Moor's Sigh (for the Granada of Federico Garcia Lorca)', which is thirty one lines of sustained panache. If only Clark would work with a sympathetic but firm editor - it is no good insisting on total control over your own book production if that control consists of banging the lid down on your own head with such firmness.
Naomi Wallace has a violent tum of phrase in To Dance a Stony Field, and she will certainly get ...
NAOMI WALLACE, To Dance a Stony Field (Peterloo) £6.95
MIKE JENKINS, This House My Ghetto (Seren) £5.95
TONY CONRAN, All Hallows: Symphony in 3 Movements (Gomer) £4.50
TESSA RANSFORD, Medusa Dozen (The Ramsay Head Press) £6.50
With so much excellent technology available, any small press enterprise can tum out productions as smart as any multinational publisher. This serves Douglas Clark well in his Selected Poems, but he is let down by his aggrandising presentations of himself as Artist as Hero-Magician. It will be difficult for some readers to take his epic angst seriously:
I think on Poetry
And how I am the unknown outsider.
I think on Love
And how it has always been outside
me…
and he does himself no favours by describing his own collection as 'more of a vanity production'. This alone will put off any readers he deserves; a shame when he can write such successful poems as 'The Moor's Sigh (for the Granada of Federico Garcia Lorca)', which is thirty one lines of sustained panache. If only Clark would work with a sympathetic but firm editor - it is no good insisting on total control over your own book production if that control consists of banging the lid down on your own head with such firmness.
Naomi Wallace has a violent tum of phrase in To Dance a Stony Field, and she will certainly get ...
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