Editors, how they choose what to publish

Being human, and therefore insatiably inquisitive when we are not either rolling drunk or asleep, we always want to know - don't we? - why in heaven's name the poetry editor over at Faber or Cape or Salt or Green Spearmint Press has managed to reject that manuscript of seventy-six double-spaced pages over which we may have sweated years of ever thickening blood.

Usually, though, they don't really tell us - well, who can blame them? - because they haven't got the time to go into that sort of thing when they are being paid so little, and it's raining outside, and some red-rimmed-eyed number-cruncher has once again threatened the poetry list with closure, and they are consequently engaged in a ferocious counter-attack, which may or may not involve getting all their authors - including the best-selling fiction writers - to stage a mass resignation from the ever grimmer and glummer publishing conglom in which they have never felt that they have been exactly sitting pretty...

Who would write back to a mere feedback-thirsty poet in such trying circumstances? Precious few. Precious, precious few, at risk of over-emphasising the point. So we thought that we would ask them for you, as a little act of public service. Why do they publish what they publish? What makes one manuscript special and another not so special?

Here is the note I sent to various editors, and below ...