Forum

This latest addition to the iota website was added in January 2005 to give visitors the opportunity to share views on issues concerning poetry. We hope it will be a stage for lively discussion. If you would like to take part, please send your views to us by email iotapoetry@aol.com or by post (1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Stratford-on-Avon, Warks CV37 0LR England) and we will aim to publish them on this page within a few days of receiving them. We reserve the right to withhold anything we deem offensive or libelous but do not intend to censor in any other way.

I read with interest the findings from your webpage poll [in iota 68's editorial]. The one that intrigued me most was 'should magazines pay poets?' I wondered if the question needed a bit more than a yes/no answer, given that the poetry editors I know are unpaid and that most magazines, like PM, are run with a great deal of time and effort on a break even basis, but more often at a loss. The more interesting questions would be: How many of the 58 per cent who said 'yes' realise that most poetry editors are unpaid? How many realise that the very economical magazines would have to double or treble in price to pay poets? How many of that 58 per cent actually subscribe to magazines that effectively charge what amounts to no more than a decent pub lunch for two for a year's supply? Very few I suspect.
The lesson learned from by submission in-tray is that fewer than 1 in 10 submitting poets actually subscribe to PM. It is also a minor irritation that poets I have supported on a regular basis with up to 15 acceptances, still find that PM is not worthy of the few pounds I ask for 12 issues. Needless to say it is very tempting to deny the few genuine readers of PM the exposure of those non-subscribing poets' usually excellent poetry. But then - if I do that - there is little point in running a poetry magazine that, in my editorial view, tries to offer the best that is on offer.
However, it was good to note that some poets realise that it should be up to 'grant' maintained magazines to pay for poetry. Then again, the contents of many 'grant' maintained magazines are no better than those that aren't - and in some cases worse. The 'value' of Poetry Monthly, in my view, is that I feel it is worth my time and effort to maintain to bring poetry to the genuinely interested reader. Though we would all like to be 'paid' for what we do - simple marketing forces and economics say that this is not possible unless (God Forbid) poetry becomes 'fashionable'. (I'm a poetry editor! Get me outa here!!!!!!!)

I didn't realise that most poetry editors don't get paid, but I assumed that they made enough to cover their expenses plus a little extra. I would be appalled to find out that they made nothing at all. Without poetry editors, amateurs like myself would never be published, and language has to communicate otherwise there is no point in writing at all. I have never made any money from poetry and never expect to, but it enriches my life, especially as I have been housebound for nearly three years due to chronic ill health.

What other branch of the Arts is as self defeating as Poetry? I can't think of a method of publishing that is so guaranteed to bury good poems and poets than that which exists in this country at present.
    Can you imagine any other enterprise, never mind just in the Arts, where you're only allowed one shot at getting some form of success. And yet there it it, usually in heavy black type at the front of the publication 'Previously Unpublished Poems only'. Let's take painting. I'm not altogether sure how it works in the Art world but I've an artist friend who has exhibited his paintings all over London. He'd be completely baffled (he was, because I asked him) if he'd been told that no other Gallery would hang his work as he'd already shown it somewhere else. Or a photograph published in one magazine and never accepted elsewhere. How about music? Would a composer accept the fact that because the CBSO has played his work then no other orchestra would play it? Or a pop tune - played once on Radio Cumbria never to be played on Radio One. I know the group would sign for a label but that's like signing with an agent. The playwright who has had his or her work performed at the Birmingham Rep so the Royal Court won't look at it. Publishing novels at the same time is on a different scale and economically wouldn't make sense usually.
    Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that restricting the method of publishing in the poetry magazines to previously unpublished works has two consequences. The first and minor one is that a lot of available space is filled by not very good poems. But the second consequence is crucial and it is that a really good, maybe great, poem might be published in a small magazine with a circulation in the dozens and that's it. Virtually certain to be lost forever unless spotted for an anthology and how likely is that? This is crazy.
    So what's the alternative? Obviously there still has to be a policy of printing new poems else it all stagnates but there must be the freedom to publish poems already published. This would emulate the pop charts at a crude level. So in my best of all possible worlds a good poem would start to be published in lots of magazines all over the country and would be spotted by all sorts of readers. From there it would not be long before it would appear in anthologies which seem to be the stock in trade of Waterstones or Ottakars or whatever and then both readers of poetry and general readers would start to see the best of current poetry rather than stuff that's good but highly restrictive in origin. And it might well then encourage the general reader to hunt out where these poems originated from i.e. the poetry magazines.
    As a sort of experiment I tried to see how this would work in practice with a friend who loves reading novels but not usually poetry. I gave her a couple of poetry magazines to read through. After a time her eyes seemed to glaze over. She reckoned they were mostly a bit dull, a bit samey or she didn't understand them.
    I then gave her a copy of 'The Firebox' and the reaction was different. She liked a fair few of them and got pleasure from them. She liked the poems.
    The lesson is that good poetry works. This isn't about what is 'good'. That will take care of itself. The way it's published now is stifling it at birth.

Terry Quinn has advanced an interesting topic for Forum. The poetry book I happen to have at hand is Seamus Heaney's The Haw Lantern (faber and faber). Behind me on the bookshelves peering over my shoulders are wizards of the written word like R S Thomas, Dylan Thomas and Ted Hughes. I mention this to illustrate that the cream sometimes does float upwards, albeit sometimes slowly, and that the small poetry presses cannot be held responsible if it doesn't. I fully support the idea of publishing new poems. It seems to me that there are two kinds of poets. There are those, and Terry may be one, who write with the idea of maybe becoming famous, call them quasi-professional poets, and others who scribble furiously and foolishly believing that they can get all that damned stuff out of their system. I'm in the second category. Of course, I am delighted when a magazine like iota or Pulsar takes a poem of mine or when I have the odd competition success and that for me is enough. If some poetic talent scout should chance to spot me and sign me on like a poetic David Beckham then so be it. But I won't be losing any sleep over it.
I was interested in what Terry said about paintings as I'm currently discussing the idea of paintings and poems side-by-side with an artist here in Vienna. We may exhibit. Hey, I say forward for you Terry!

I found Terry Quinn's views very interesting. It is indeed hard to feel a poem may have only one "airing" and even then may reach only a small readership. But I don't feel the comparison with painting or music holds good. As far as I can tell the viewing public for art exhibitions and the audiences for concerts are infinitely vaster than that for poetry. So thank God a poem has the chance of that one airing and thank God there are those stalwart poetry magazine editors who are prepared to give it that chance. It is always possible to give it a second airing abroad, or post it on your own website if you have one. Or share it with others at public readings. It ain't dead after the first time out!

I am very much in favour of giving previously published poems a second airing - little-known poets need all the exposure they can get. Suggest 1-2 year gap. It's interesting to come across a poem you read two years previously and see if your views about it have changed.

When Beethoven gave Vienna his 7th Symphony the performance was attended by 50 hardy souls and curiosity seekers. The craze then was for Salieri operas. Vincent Van Gogh sold two painting in his lifetime. Mozart's body was dumped in the common grave with a cartload of other corpses, later dug up and put on a bone pile somewhere. Dylan Thomas often received the princely sum of one pound for a poem.
Today we can photocopy our stuff at almost no cost at the local copy shop and dish it out to all and sundry. And we can also send it all over the internet. Universities are great places to send poems to. Down Under (in Oz), an art group, has one of mine heading up its poetry homepage, or they did last time I took a look. I've joined others and stuck poems on a wooden frame in the town centre. Some poets go round bars flogging their photocopied stuff. It's a kind of Fair Trade Poetry. You can try haggling up to 50 per cent off. It's all part of the fun. The point I'm making here is that there have never been as many ways to get your really good poem into circulation. Yes, the really good poem can still come to prominence but a word of caution; remember Beethoven and Van Gogh and don't go crazy if it doesn't.

With respect, it seems that Terry Quinn has an article in his bonnet about poetry magazines only wanting to take unpublished work, and that good poems then do not get a second airing. The thrust of his argument is also contained in his very similar (almost word for word) article in the latest edition of Envoi. Now having read this similar article twice in different publications within a few months of each other amply displays why editors of poetry magazines have also to be aware that some poets also practice multiple submissions. It is mildly irritating when I see the same poem at much the same time, both in my Poetry Monthly and another magazine or website. This is not only unfair on the editors, but also unfair on the subscribers who happen to take both magazines (in effect, they are paying for the same poem twice). It is also unfair on an unpublished poet who might have had one of the spaces taken in one of the two magazines.
Personally, I have no qualms about a good poem having more than one airing, though some time must have elapsed - say 24 months - between one publication of a poem and the next, but editors have to protect themselves and their reader from the multiple submissions and possible publication of a poem at much the same time and the only way this can be done is to ask for 'unpublished work only' since a growing number of poets are ignoring the submission custom of 'one set of poems to one magazine at a time'.
I know some poets will excuse this or argue that the time editors take to reply means unpublished work is tied up for too long in editor's in-trays. I won't speak for other editors on this point, but my answer is that my magazine has only so much space - is worked on and appears at a given rate and I can go no faster than that. Sending multiple submissions of the same poems to all magazines only exacerbates the situation in my already overcrowded in-tray, and I suspect, in others.

I'm coming late to Terry Quinn's topic. For me there are two flaws in his argument:-
1) What about poetry readers? I read and subscribe to as many poetry magazines as I can afford to (and not just to check suitability for submitting my poems either). I find it irritating to read a poem in Envoi and then see the same poem in Poetry Monthly, Orbis, iota etc within a short space. I pay a subscription to see new poems not to re-read poems I've already read. If I want to do that I can just pull the magazine it was originally published in.
2) There's a very odd assumption here that a magazine publication is the sole outing of a poem. A magazine publication does not prevent that poem being included in an anthology (and some anthologies are open to poets submitting their own work), included in a collection, included on a website (more than one website if the poet has a personal website, a magazine includes it on their website, the writers' group(s) the poet belongs to publishes the poem on their site(s), any local literature promotion agents - such as literature development officers - publish it on their site), displayed in local libraries and, of course, read at live literature events, open mic opportunities, etc, etc, etc.
Comparing poems in The Firebox with a poetry magazine picked at random is not comparing like with like. The Firebox was a selection from over a century's worth of poems which have had plenty of time to shift to the top of the pile. Poems in the last issue of iota won't get selected for The Firebox volume 2 until the beginning of the next century and who knows what will be decided as worth promoting to greatness then. Equally, the gallery and theatre comparisons don't hold because magazines aren't geographically restricted: it makes sense for a painting to move from a gallery in Cumbria to London because it will be seen by a different audience. A poem can start life in a workshop, be published in a magazine, be read at a local open mic spot, be selected for an anthology and read at the anthology's local in a bookshop, be selected for a poet's pamphlet and read at promotional readings, be published in a full-length collection and read at even more promotional readings and find itself revived in a 'best of poems about x', revived in a 'best poems of the 21st century' and may find itself on the school curriculum. Poems get more than one shot: it just takes a bit of self-promotion and imagination.

Just a quick word re Gwil Williams' comments on 9/2/05: Different audiences for different times: in the 1960s the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko attracted thousands to his readings. Isn't that a wonderful fact? Wish I could have been there; and how did they all fit in? Now poets don't get paid; editors have a hard time. But, paid or unpaid, poets keep language alive.

Gill McEvoy mentioned her wish to be at Yevgeny Yevtushenko's readings. I was the Night Casualty Porter at Boscombe Hospital in Bournemouth in 1977 and had been for four years. I left to go to college. I rang to see how things were going a week later and one of my friends said that a couple of nights after my last shift a Russian bloke named Yevtushenko had brought his wife in for the birth of their baby. And yes, it was him. Couldn't believe it.

Gill McEvoy writes interestingly about thousands attending poetry readings and, believe it or not, it still goes on here on mainland Europe. I saw on the television recently an item about a poet in Rumania (I think it was) who is so popular that he packs them in at football stadiums. Whether he has political ambitions was not quite clear. Here, where I am in Vienna, I've often joined 350 or so to listen to poetry readings in the Schubert Salon in the Vienna Concert House. The best thing I heard recently was a rendition of Under Milk Wood on the radio in German. Unfortunately, I missed the stage performance of it at the town's Casino Theatre, but if they do it again I'll be there. Must dash off as I'm off to the theatre for Oscar Wilde's Brunby in German a la Elfriede Jelinek! Yes, it's all happening in Austria folks!

I just wanted to say how wonderful I found Terry Quinn's story of Yevtushenko bringing his wife to Boscombe hospital to have their child. And has Terry produced a poem to go with the tale?

R S Thomas passed away in the year 2000 at the age of 87 and some would say cut down in his prime. During his octogenarian years Thomas was at the height of his poetic prowess and was relentlessly delving into the metaphysical, theological and philosophical problems that beset mankind and also into the evolution of everyday language.
When his papers were being sorted through there were found there, as one would expect, a fair number of poems; his work in progress. Many of these poems were in a file headed Residues and it was under this title that 70 of his poems were first published by Bloodaxe Books in 2002.
The final poem in Residues entitled ‘The greatest language…’ alerts us that today language must ‘earn its keep’ or be ‘thrown away’. The poet is concerned that language may not be ‘cherished’ in the modern age as once it was. Today the snappy slogan is everything; the political slogan and the advertising slogan being two good examples. Language must fight its own corner and the poet is obviously the person who must help language to do this.
This does not mean that poets should go back to the age of airy fairy descriptive verse or that they should neglect short sharp poetry but rather that the poet has an obligation to use language to effect. In the modern poem every word must pull its weight; there is no room for abstract sentimentality. Today fresh adjectives must be found and powerful new verbs discovered so that the poet may write about the facts ‘sprouting out of the ground’ as R S Thomas calls them and by doing this revitalise the language.

Why the hell are poetry editors plagued with poetasters? I had a massive manuscript in a fine calligraphic hand from some guy who whined on about the demise of English poetry and rhyme. He asked me to 'define a poem and poetry'. Since he tells me he was a gardener I felt he should define a garden and gardening. They are different things to different people. I'm afraid rhymesters just show their ignorance of English poetry when they always forget (or don't know about) the historic place in English poetry of 'blank verse'. There is nothing lax (or modern) about writing poetry which avoids 'rhyme'. At the risk of poking my head over the critical barricade - poetry to me is the quality of what is said and the quality in the way it is said. Something can be 'poetic' without rhyme.

To rhyme or not to rhyme - that is the question raised in iota 70's editorial. Most of us would say that rhymes at the ends of lines stifle creativity, shackle powers of expression, blunt imaginations and lead to extreme dullness. Shakespeare used rhyme only for his minor characters. When the main actors had something to say rhyme was abandoned. In the King James Bible there is great poetry without rhyme. Rhyme is not the traditional English poetic form as some people would have us believe. However, we cannot and should not write-off rhyme completely. Lewis Carroll composed a remarkable piece of burlesque with his Jabberwocky and Kubla Khan by Coleridge (under the influence of 'two grains of opium') was also a rhyming performance of some magnitude. Having made that observation, it would still seem that poets and poetry readers who believe that end of line rhyme may safely be reserved for ballads, nursery songs, greeting cards and seasonal jingles are probably, in the main, quite right. But a word of caution! Avoid complacency; a second Sir John Betjeman, 1972 Poet Laureate, could easily come strolling through Slough, casually rhyming 'cad' with 'mad'...'oak' with 'joke'...

When I read a poem which rhymes I instinctively read it like this: 'DA-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM, da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM.' The best rhyming poems are the ones which are so good that I don't notice they rhyme until I have read them a second or even a third time because the rhyme is almost incidental. It takes a really good poet to bring this off. I do love internal rhyme, though, as long as it isn't overused.

I cannot understand anyone's having an antipathy to rhyming poetry. Skilful use of rhyme is a great thing to master, and I agree with Eleanor Dent that in the best rhyming poems you barely notice the rhyme. I cite the late Michael Donaghy's sonnet The Present as a wonderful example of brilliant and unobtrusive rhymes, and before anyone writes in to point out that a sonnet requires a rhyme scheme, yes, I know this, but Donaghy's example has struck me as being truly wonderful. I also love Adrienne Rich's rhyming poem Aunt Jennifer's Tigers, which is not a sonnet. And I rejoice in poetry that displays a subtle use of internal rhyme; perhaps I love that the most. But good poetry is always good poetry, rhymed or not.

It is of course true that Shakespeare used rhyme for minor characters - in his plays. However, my recollection is that Shakespeare also wrote sonnets. Moreover, he used rhyme more often than the writer supposes - even for saying a few "big" things - Richard II, by far the most lyrical of the history plays, is characterised by rhyming couplets at the end of major speeches, for no reason that anyone has been able to discover (that I know of) other than the author fancied it. It may also be said with some justice that rhyme is not a traditional English form (and even that it is far better suited for the highly inflected Romance languages), but I suspect a dose of writing alliterative verse in the style of the Angles and Saxons, whose pedigree is surely pure enough, would soon have the author growling just as loudly about shackled creativity, stifled expression, and dullness. it is not clear to me that there is any real "traditional" English (or American) form, there are simply forms, using rhyme, metre, assonance/dissonance, rhythms of speech, whatever, each with its own discipline, limits, and challenges. I rarely write rhymed poems and use rhyme only sparingly in what I do write, but I pay due recognition to the challenges and pleasures of writing within a formal discipline, whatever that may be. To borrow from another art form, the great American blues drummer Fred Below was once asked how he could stand playing within the confines of the genre instead of the more free-form rhythms of jazz, he looked up and simply said, "That's the whole beauty of it."

Curiouser and Curiouser Dept: Should we appear to have more men's than women's poems in iota, perhaps the following statistics will help explain why. In the first 40 days of this year, we have received a total of 638 poems from 139 poets. Yes, we're boring enough to count, yes we log every single one, so that if something goes wrong we can tell a poet when we received the work in question and what happened to it. Of those 139 people who have sent their work, 93 are men, only 41 women, with 5 unidentifiable in terms of sex. Yet at the time of writing we have 154 subscribers, with 77 women, 65 men, and 12 either institutions or unidentifiable. Therefore, while men make up 42.2 per cent of our subscribers, they are responsible for 66.9 per cent of the poetry made available to us - and while 50 per cent of our subscribers are female, only 29.5 per cent of the poetry sent to us comes from women. Make of that what you will.... but if you have opinions on this, or if you think there is a specific reason why we're attracting significantly less female poets, please let us know. We ought to stress that our editorial selection process is about as equal as we can make it - to get into iota, a poem has to be accepted by both of us.

I'm fascinated by the statistics in your editorial (yes, the poems too, but I'm not through reading them yet!). Is it possible that more women go in for competitions than send to magazines? I've done a quick check on various competition sites and certainly in 2005 women had a high percentage of winning or highly placed poems in the competitions I looked at:
Barnet - 1st, 2nd, 3rd
Cardiff - 1st
Essex - 2nd, 3rd
Frogmore - 1st, 2nd
Iota - 2nd, 3rd
Plough (Open) - 3rd
Plough (Short) - 1st, 2nd
Poetry London - 2nd, 3rd
Ware - 1st, 2nd, 3rd
Wells - 1st, 2nd
It would be interesting to know how the percentage of entries stacks up, to see how they match with iota's statistics.

Perhaps women feel rejection more keenly. That is, lose confidence in their work.

I was interested in the comments in your editorial about the ratio of men and women poets contributing to your magazine. I think it is a similar picture universally - but strangely on every course or workshop I've attended, the number of women far outweighs the number of men - are more women than men writing, but being more secretive about it, or do men feel they know it all already?

I was very interested in your analysis of the ratio of women to men subscribers in your recent editorial, and the same with regard to those submitting work to you. I once heard Carole Baldock, editor of Orbis, saying that when she rejected a woman poet's work it was usually months before she would hear again from that poet, whereas when she rejected a man's work very often a new submission would arrive almost by return of post. I must admit it was a revelation to me and I determined then never to be one of those women poets who go away to lick their wounds (or whatever these poets do) but to continue to submit whenever I had suitable work to send. I'm very curious to know if you've found similar patterns of response? Or has anyone out there anything to add?

Eds: Yes, we can answer about the patterns of behaviour among male/female poets. It must be stressed we certainly don't mind people submitting work to us two or three times a year. We're not trying to discourage poets in any way - hopefully it's the opposite, but it's true that some people (mainly men) seem to have a mania for sending work out almost by return of post when they've been rejected. Also, it must be said that whenever we reject and receive in return abuse, that's almost always from a man. (Though the only person who has actually sent us a virus in an email as a thank you for having work rejected was a woman!)
In 2005 we had a total of 932 poets send work to us for iota. Of those, 608 were men, 298 women and 26 we couldn't tell. Of those, people who sent only once during the year: 448 men, 255 women, 23 unknowns. Of the people who sent more than once during the year: 160 men, 43 women, 3 unknowns.

Perhaps some of us females are a bit too modest, holding back from submitting if we think we ought to do better - while men are always happy to demonstrate their one-up-manship.

The 2001 published copy of the late Nicholas Albery's wonderful anthology Poem for the Day contains 366 poems and a page of advice on cardboard coffins and woodland burial grounds. In this entertaining and useful book the men poets outnumber the women something like 6:1. The most represented poetess is Emily Dickinson with five poems and the most popular poet is William Shakespeare with 21. In burial it's about even.
As I see it, the poetry editor's job is to select poems for publication purely on merit so long as they are in line with the ethos of the publication they are aimed at. If you believe that as a poetess you are getting a raw deal the answer is to simply sign your submission in the manner of W.B.Yeats or E.J. Scovell. Whether you can raise your poetry to the level of Yeats and Scovell is another question.

The advantage for women poets in submitting work to competitions rather than journals is: anonymity. A guarantee that poems are judged strictly on merit.
Until the late 1980s there were virtually no women published in magazines or anthologies, so perhaps we older poets still lack confidence in our welcome. Unfortunately for younger writers, in a recent experiment both boys and girls, given identical essays, marked those signed by (fake) males names higher than those by (fake) female ones!
However, although modesty and a willingness to support others are unselfish virtues, being over sensitive to rejection doesn't help the cause of poetry. Nor is it helpful to journals like iota and publishers like Bloodaxe who genuinely wish to represent a wide spectrum of work.
If we women don't take responsibility for going through this open door, it may close again for future generations. It's up to us!

Interesting discussion on the responses poets make to rejection. I submitted two poems to iota in November 2005, both rejected, and haven't sent anything in since, although I may try again this autumn, so no hard feelings there. At least with iota you can respond to rejection because Bob and Janet do turn submissions round quickly, as do Obsessed with Pipework and The Coffee House to name two others. Sadly some magazines do not seem to think it necessary to reply at all. One has had two of my poems (and an SAE!) since February 13th. They have ignored two follow up e-mails. After this length of time I don't really care whether they want to publish them or not but I am annoyed at their discourtesy. Surely if someone has taken the trouble to send something in editors should take the trouble to read and respond. What do others think?

I've just received some renewal notices from mags I subscribe to and am fascinated by the techniques used to make me empty my purse.
From Sphinx:
'No plea, no plaint, no curse, no bribe/ but do (if you like Sphinx) resubscribe'.
And from Poetry Nottingham:
'hope you will find much to enjoy in the current issue. My second hope is that your pleasure will not be marred by the enclosed renewal note..'
I was very charmed by both of these. Does anyone else have any interesting 'invitations to resubscribe' to share?

Resubscribe! Getting poets/readers to subscribe in the first place can effectively be a joke, but without the laughs. While I really do appreciate my regular subscribers, over the years I have developed a vague contempt for poets who merely see my magazine as yet just another platform to 'strut their stuff', while they, equally contemptuously 'do me the favour' of submitting their poems. I appreciate that we all have an interest in this thing called poetry, but, in general, poets like to write the stuff rather than read it.

It is a waste of time trying to court the odd poet who has subscribed in the past to do so again with platitudes. It is far better to simply tell them their subs have run out, and leave it to the quality of poetrymonthly.com; or maybe a poet's conscience, to attract the pen to the cheque book.

Quite frankly after more than ten years as a poetry editor I now know that there is a ceiling to the market for poetry magazines, and that no amount of cajoling, advertising, bribery - or even promises of publication - will get the vast amount of poets to subscribe to any magazine more than once. That is why I place an extremely high value on those poets who have subscribed and stayed with my magazine. If I listen to anyone for advice it is those poets who feel that the few pounds I ask for every twelve issues is well worth it.

Having several poetry and lit. subs on the go I'm at a complete loss concerning the renewal dates of the various publications. Martin Holroyd's system of writing the issue number on the address label is so simple that I wonder why other publishers don't do it. It's Poetry Monthly no 133 he reminds me 12 times a year!

Someone recently asked me why I was not starting lines of poetry with a lower case letter. The argument was that this gave the poem more sense of flow. This was a surprise to me and I had a look over the last few issues of various mags and sure enough this seems to be the case (no pun intended). I then went through some anthologies and this usage seems to have started about twenty years ago. Any thoughts anyone on this?

Generally initial capitals signal a poem written using traditional forms (e.g. ballad) and/or end-of-line rhymes. Where verse libre or a less formal structure is used (e.g. using internal rhyme, syllabics, or even not justifying a new line to the left hand margin), then lower case is more appropriate. Initial capitals can have an interrupting effect on the flow and rhythm of the poem which may work for or against the poem. Some poets like them, others don't and there are no hard and fast rules. Essentially whether you use initial capitals or not depends on whether they work for the individual poem under consideration.

From Cadenza magazine's poetry submission guidelines - "in common with general contemporary practice - we do not capitalise the first letter of each line unless it is the start of a new sentence and we put poem titles in capitals."

How about sprinkling a few haiku in those tantalising white spaces where the poem only fills half the page? The world needs more haiku converts!

Re your forum discussion on white space, please don't change anything - I think you have got it just right. Like paintings, poems need their own space - the professional galleries hang sparsely, it's only amateur art societies that cram pictures into every available space on the wall. Also, I like the fact that iota issues are relatively slim - somehow it makes each poem seem more special and accessible.

I, also, appreciate iota's use of white space which gives each poem space to breathe and to be read without distraction. There is another reason that I wouldn't want to see Iota filled up with haiku and that is that good haiku - real haiku - are not common. I see far too many witticisms or simple observations, broken into lines of 5/7/5 syllables and labeled as haiku. True haiku - or at least, the nearest we can get to it in English language - is an expression of a moment of inspiration or enlightenment fully experienced by the writer and shown by at least two clear (usually natural) images which may compare, associate or contrast. There are, of course, other Haiku conventions such as the seasonal indicator but I feel the minimum that makes a short poem a haiku is the imagery and its demonstrated effect on the writer. Observations, witticisms, aphorisms in the 5/7/5 format are, IMO, short poems and not Haiku just as every 14 line poem is not a sonnet.

With the continuous killings and bloodshed that are going on in various wars, especially in Iraq, I am surprised by the total absence of poems about them. A powerful poem may make greater impact than public rallies or even the use of media. They can reveal the innermost tragedies and follies of war in a prolific way. One need not be a soldier or be in the war to write about it. How long can we bury our face in the sand? The role of war poems cannot be emphasised enough.

In 2003 Faber and Faber published a timely paperback 101 Poems Against War featuring an Afterword by Andrew Motion which highlights the folly of war. You may still find copies in the shops. Poetic content ranges from Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est through to Night in Al-Hamra by Saadi Yousef and even includes one from my favourite war poet Miroslav Holub which is what persuaded me to buy the book in the first place, well that and the fact that all royalties are going to charity. If Rebecca Boyd or anybody else is interested, my own humble contribution to the poetic war effort, my new metaphorical war poem Crow, will appear on www.ink-sweat-and-tears.com from the first week in September 2007, the site's editor Charles Christian assures me.

You are absolutely spot on when you say I object to reviewers who are 'self satisfied and self projecting'. There are those with a decidedly 'us and them' attitude; there are those who are socially inept; there are those who attempt to 'entertain' at some poet's or editor's expense and there are those who simply imitate to the point where much reviewing is clichéd.

I agree a review is one person's view only, but there are simple techniques whereby a reviewer can offer criticism as well meant advice to which I take no exception. For instance, I am well aware that any anthology will contain poems that are; in someone else's view, not so good while others may be liked. It only takes a couple of brain cells for anyone to realise the truth of that, so why make an issue of it in a review.

I'm afraid that Darcy; even with her PhD in Publishing, has missed the whole point of why anyone bothers to run a poetry magazine outside of the protective walls of academia and that the luxury of a poem per page has to be economically factored in as a cost. Good reviewers should make 'valid points - politely', not groan on about the unavoidable.

I'm also trying to make the point that magazine editors should not excuse themselves by using the reason that 'reviews are voluntary so (they) are obliged to use them'. When I used voluntary reviewers I stipulated some 'don'ts' when offering criticism - those that didn't like it could refuse.

I once did a talk on Review Writing - notes are online at http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/texts/writingreviews.html
While doing the research it was clear that people have different views on what a review should be. What's wrong with entertaining at the expense of the book? After all, few readers have the slightest intention of buying the book anyway.
My guess is that reviewers are kinder than they used to be. Particularly in the States, poetry reviewers of late have been accused of mutual back-scratching. I was surprised when I read in Acumen (May 2006, p93) that 'The execution would embarrass a conscientious GCSE student: ****** teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia' but perhaps there should be more reviews like that rather than cautiously worded neutrality.

The Spring 2008 issue of Acumen contained a few letters complaining about the nature of a particular review in the previous issue, echoing the views that Martin Holroyd made here on (17/7/07). They additionally pointed out that new authors in particular deserve "well meant advice" and constructive criticism.

I read your introduction about funding. It's a very good question as to whether the public purse should support poetry or not. We live in one of the richest countries in the world where the individual spend on recreational activity is very high as a proportion of personal income. So, the real question is not about public support but as to why poets are so poor at attracting almost any of this money. If you asked for a summary of the average content of the poetry magazine publishing contemporary writing the words would be 'pastoral reminiscence.' Finely woven, excellently crafted but rarely anything that sucks at the soul. You go, 'mmm' not, 'Oh! Wow!' Sometimes I wonder if the language is softly censored. Quite a lot of sugar but rarely any lemon. Universal themes but to whose universe?
We live in a world of Immigration? People trafficking? Relationship breakdown. Urban living. Sexuality. Questions about our location in the modern world. Racism. Murder. Death. Religion - its internal conflicts or ownership of the human. Teenage pregnancy. Abortion. Male-female issues. Unemployment or bankruptcy. Absent parenting. ... fathers in distress. Obsession with media. Music. The holocaust and contemporary genocide. The human spirit celebrated. Humour even. Conflict between profit and creativity. The fast food, smoking drinking culture..........
Descriptive story telling has been eroded by the 40 line rule. My point is that until our writing reaches out and touches peoples' lives it will remain in need of subsidy. People who want something published copy the style of what has gone before. So, well woven pastoral reminiscence is available in large quantity.
The titles of many of your chosen poems are: Water-colour; Allotment; Crossings; In the textile gallery; Common freshwater fishes; Can you ride horses; Food; Belas Knap Long Barrow; Landscape; Flowering Currant; Country Museum; Heron; Inventions; Poetry of Mountains; Corner of the Market; Paraphrase on a theme of Rail Network of South Yorkshire; Netting Fairies; The Water Tank; May Morning. Serenity.
'Divorce' is a well crafted poem but is 'a cat no one wants/ a man on the internet/ and French windows yawning out' the best we can come up with to represent the shredding of family life and the hollow emotional chasm that moving on anchors into the subconscious?
Led Zeppelin have sold 300 million records because they learnt when to hit the guitars hard and when to play softly. Pink Floyd's sales are equally powerful because they learnt to bend the guitar and voice into peoples' minds. Elton John tells you it’s about 'space and harmony.' But they all reach into the soul and communicate. Poetry is 'communication' not maths with words. If we communicate well people will buy our work.
Please don't get me wrong. Your effort and commitment is incredible. I have enjoyed reading your selection. But if it’s money our craft requires for its longevity our pianos have to play the right notes to engage peoples' minds and our editors have to have the wisdom to move beyond pastoral introversion.

Personally I think poetry would be better served if a seat on the Arts Council was literally won by means of a lottery ticket, the participants being anyone who has run a magazine for a couple of years or won a poetry competition or been active in performance etc. It would also be nice to hear of financially successful poets leaving a wad of money to small magazines instead of supposedly prestigious institutions like universities. If a particular editor was visionary enough to publish you, wouldn't it be apt to leave him or her a few hundred pounds in your will instead of to those greedy grandchildren... Here in USA , some of the smaller poetry organisations have themed competitions sponsored by the families of people who have just died - so if Grandpa liked maps (as did my grandfather!) then the theme would be 'Maps'. It's a way of connecting to the public at large to spotlight some unusual hobby or interest of the deceased, or even the disease they died from (as long as it's widely interpreted and not just a rehash of the symptoms - eg Alzheimers would obviously be a theme of 'Memory' ).

I'm uncertain about subsidy and independence but like you find the ways of the Arts Council are a source of amazement and mystery. I only have very brief personal experience which may well not be at all typical as at the time I applied I was unwell. It seemed to me that the hoops we had to try to jump through were of questionable relevance to someone asking for a small grant and in the end I found I lacked the stamina to cope with bureaucracy having spent much of my working life trying to cope with it. The result of course was that a potentially worthwhile project foundered and I'm disinclined to try again as a result of that skirmish. On a less personal note we often hear of decisions which seem to make little sense as your editorial indicates. If I was in a position of influence I'd vote for a subsidy for Iota and Ragged Raven Press (as I have purchased some of your publications) with little hesitation. I very much hope that Iota and the Press are somehow able to survive.

Over the last couple of years I have wanted to expand the range of subjects that I write about to include some of the topics raised by Andie Wingham and Gwilym Williams in previous posts on the Forum. It wasn’t until then that I realised how narrow the base of themes are in contemporary British poetry magazines and competitions.
The recent results in the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition sums the situation up perfectly. The judge in his introduction stated that ‘we live in troubled times’ so I was anticipating winners who had been tackling such subjects as global warming, peak oil, the wars around the world, water shortages, expansion of the world population to 6 billion, poverty, debt, the list goes on. What was the result? The winner was about a love affair, the second was about a pub conversation ending with lust and the third was about old age. Perennial subjects which will always interest poets and no problem with that but surely poetry must be more inclusive than these topics. And from my reading there really is very little else and especially in the funded magazines.
Andie says ‘If we communicate well people will buy our work’ and I agree with that but would add (and I think she is saying the same thing from her previous statements) she is also saying that what we communicate about is important as well.
I would also echo her comments about the hard work and dedication that current editors put into their craft.
I suppose the natural follow on from this post is that people who want to expand the range of poetry to include our wish list is for them to start their own magazine and put their money where their mouth is. Gulp.

In response to the editorial in iota 79 and Andie Wingham's excellent contribution to the Forum, I have to say I'm in agreement with most of the points she makes - particularly in her reference to the 'pastoral reminiscence' that seems to characterise poetry magazines and competitions (also confirmed by Terry Quinn's example). It reminds me of Adrian Mitchell's poem Involvement about a beating up in an alley witnessed by a writer which concludes 'English writer pisses off to write a poem about ants'.
However as regards funding I see no reason why poetry should not be subsidised. The government spends vast amounts of our money on fighting a war in Iraq, on renewing its nuclear submarines, in propping up a bank that can't run its business properly, so why not in funding poetry? Poetry survives in the main only due to the hard work, enthusiasm and commitment of individual editors who have to sort through mountains of submissions to produce each issue of their magazine, at times having to dip into their own pockets in order to do so. The importance of small magazines for the budding poet cannot be underestimated. Where else will her/his work be given an airing? (The Internet if you know the site it's on).
As regards Andie's comments about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd - there is a difference between music and poetry that is more than just 'reaching into the soul and communicating' (though I agree this is vital). Music and musicians are widely featured and reviewed in the popular press as well as having 'special interest' magazines such as Uncut, Mojo and Q - these are large circulation publications available at any newsagents. There is no equivalent to this on the poetry scene - even reviewing in the 'broadsheets' is sporadic - maybe a few token gestures towards the genre with 'the Saturday poem' but nothing like the exposure available to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd irrespective of quality and relevance to the audience. Not that vast sales necessarily equate with quality or longevity e.g. Gareth Gates or Will Young - it may have more to do with the success of the record companies in promoting a product. Even if poets do communicate well and reach into people's minds, it can be an uphill task to get the work known and for sales to follow. Poets do not have their latest offerings displayed on the sides of buses or on billboards, or have the exposure of television programmes or advertising. Now there's a thought!

Yesterday I went to watch Blackburn play Birmingham City. For me it was a cheap day as Blues were playing in the north so it only cost about £35. A normal Saturday game would set me back £60 or more. And a year's subscription to most poetry magazines is still around the £12 to £15 mark. I read what is said in editorials about costs and subscriptions being vital to keep magazines going but I've never seen anyone querying what is the actual rate for the job. I would be quite willing to pay £30 a year for each magazine that I subscribe to and more if it is one of my favourites. I get more than £30 a year's worth of pleasure out of them. What is that - about 50p a week for each one. Peanuts. And anyway it doesn't sound from the content of these editorials that much success at selling is achieved by keeping the prices low so it's a double whammy. Low prices and low sales.
And we lost 2-1.

Given that a considerable number of people in the world actually write poetry it would be a natural assumption that the same number of people would read it. It would be another assumption that a slightly less figure would subscribe to cheap poetry magazines that are, fundamentally, run on a hobbyist, break even basis. The fact is that most poets do not read other people's poetry.
I am just coming to the end of a twelve year stint of running a monthly subscription poetry magazine in favour of putting it on the internet, and given the above facts, has been a reasonable success. It has given a platform to hundreds of poets. There are a few now successfully published poets who began their careers in Poetry Monthly. It has led to the
establishment of Poetry Monthly Press.
If one measures the success of a poetry magazine by its subscription figures, most are failures. If one measures that magazine's success by its influence or impact success is possible. If you measure the estimated help a magazine has been to poets you can take it more or less as read that a magazine is a success. Longevity of a magazine has less to do with subscription figures and more to do with the editor's tenacity and the ability to keep the costs down.
Poetry Monthly has had a good run reaching a height of 525 subscriptions per year. This may sound quite a formidable figure, but given that I have a data base of poetry/poets addresses, most of which came via submissions, running
to nearly six thousand, 525 is quite a paltry subscription list. At the time I took the decision to end the printed/subscription version of Poetry Monthly subscriptions had fallen away to 98 subscribers. Did this have a bearing on the decision to stop the printed issue of Poetry Monthly? The simple answer is: YES. For a long time I warned in my editorials that Poetry Monthly not only depended on my enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of a poetry reading public. It
was not the money. That barely covered the costs. What finally ground me down in the end was the indifference of poets. Sure, Poetry Monthly had a hard-core of support, but that was not enough to repay the massive effort
required to enthuse oneself to wade through yet another monthly selection process, set up, print, bind, pack and post another dwindling subscription issue. The other factor to bear in mind is the fact that a monthly magazine
is intense. There are no respites to speak of. This, too, can result in a 'monthly grind' of complaints from egotistical half-wits that still need to be answered or ignored, but they all take their toll just as letters of congratulation lift the spirit.
Do I like running a monthly poetry magazine? YES. But given that I have decided to make Poetry Monthly an internet magazine means that the donkey work has gone, as have the costs, and the poetry is, at this moment in time being accessed by upwards of 5000 world-wide readers per month and subscriptions no longer have a bearing on readership figures.