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Stanley let us persuade him to invite Neilson MacKay, who had worked with him, to subject him to a late inter view. The fruits of that labour are included in the current issue in the long, living conversation with a man so richly of his period, so candid and so provocative. A celebration, an introduction. Goodbye to him. Ninety-nine still seems a young age for such a writer. His first poem in PN Review, in 1988, was an eleg y for his friend James Wright dying in hospital, which ends – and doesn’t end – I kiss your hand and head, then I walk out on you past the fields of the sick and dying like a tourist in Monet’s garden. Letters to the Editor Up in smoke Andy Croft writes: Smokestack Books is closing at the end of this year. The backlist will still be available to order, but Smokestack will no longer be publishing new books. I set up Smokestack Books in 2004 with the aim of publishing poets a long way from the centres of cultural authority, especially oppositional, dissident, unfashionable and radical poets. Since then, Smokestack has sold over 65,000 books and published 237 titles, including books by John Berger, Victor Jara, Michael Rosen, Sylvia Pankhurst, Vernon Scannell, Linda France, Louis Aragon, Bertolt Brecht, Nikola Vaptsarov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yiannis Ritsos and anthologies of poetr y from Cuba, Greece, Kurdistan, France, Russia, Algeria and Palestine. Smokestack was also a protest at the terminal dullness of so much of the contemporary UK poetr y scene, its self-importance, excitability, lack of seriousness and self-imposed isolation from the rest of society. But what was supposed to be a positive inter vention soon became a line of retreat, defeated by PR and lazy arts journalism. During the past two decades, large sections of British economic life have been moved out of common ownership into private hands, rationed by price or simply closed down. The democratic process is blocked by inequality, authoritarianism, deceit and a narrow ideological consensus. In turn, British cultural life is blocked by the values of big business and show business. The result is an atomised, unwelcoming and unfriendly poetr y scene whose inaccessibility is barely disguised by ritual declarations about diversity and inclusion. Conversations about poetr y have been replaced by conversations about poets, discussions of tradition by accusations of plagiarism, and the language of literar y criticism by the hyperbolic language of press-releases promoting corporate prizes and celebrity book-festivals. After twenty years of running Smokestack unfunded, unpaid and single-handed, I have run out of good reasons to remain even on the margins of the uncomradely, uncongenial and frankly embarrassing world of contemporar y British poetr y. Note: PN Review has invited Andy Croft to write a fuller account in a future issue of PNR of Smokestack’s histor y and achievements, and an extended analysis of the worlds of poetr y writing and publishing, as he experienced them. Helen Vendler ventriloquised Michael Allen writes:As usual, I enjoyed reading your editorial from PNR 278. However, something has gone wrong with one of its quotations. Helen Vendler advised my PhD and the quotation seemed out of character for her when I read it. When I looked it up in a scan of the New York Times, it looks like the words really came from a letter by Linda Grant, which makes more sense in context. Michael Schmidt writes: Editorial apologies are due! When News and Notes for PN Review 149 were written in 2003, two letters had appeared in the New York Times. The first was by Helen Vendler, and to her I attributed the second, from Linda Grant. Two errors are now corrected with a single mea culpa, and histor y is put straight(er). With thanks to Michael Allen. This acknowl- edgment sadly coincides with the death of Professor Helen Vendler in April of this year at the age of ninety. The New York Times obituar y was subtitled, ‘In the poetr y marketplace, her praise had reputation-making power, while her disapproval could be withering.’ The word ‘marketplace’ might have stuck in her craw. The obituarist continued, ‘In an era dominated by poststructuralist and politically influenced literar y criticism, Ms. Vendler, who taught at Harvard for more than 30 years, adhered to the old-fashioned method of close reading, going methodically line by line, word by word, to expose a poem’s inner workings and emotional roots.’ She would have pointed out the disconnect in this piece of journalism and have recognised the symptoms from which it proceeded.
page 5
News and Notes Breach of reason • On 3 June the Colombian poet Piedad Bonnett, now seventy-three years old, was declared the winner of the 2024 Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana. The award – the most significant contemporar y recognition of a writer from Latin America, which has recognised Nicanor Parra, Ida Vitale, Blanca Varela and Juan Gelman among others – was given for the whole coherent range of her work. As a rule, the Reina Sofía, presented by the University of Salamanca, sets out to honour writers for their specifically literar y achievement which contributes to the traditions of literature in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, and has drawn attention to many whose voices are complex and uncompromised, voices that would be less likely to reach us without this recognition. The King’s Gold Medal for Poetr y is the closest analog y in the Anglophone sphere, though its reach is not so wide as the Reina Sofía. Bonnett, a doctor of letters from the University of the Andes, has published eight collections, edited anthologies, written on theatre, issued novels, as well as a book about the death of her son. In an inter view in El País she remembered how a line of Miguel Hernández had moved her to write: ‘Porque la pena tizna cuando estalla’. The breach of reason by means of synaesthesia released a sense and an effect that were moving and in context true. About the central sincerity of her work, she said, ‘if there’s anything I carr y for ward from my upbringing it is an ethical value, I have never made things up. Use literature for lying? Why? The liar deceives himself.’ She describes her poetr y as ‘accessible’ and for this among other reasons she was especially glad to receive the honour. It seemed to recognise her readers as much as her own achievement. Of her homeland, she declared, ‘this is a horrible countr y, and the poets have been able to show it as it is’. Passing the torch • The magazine Five Dials, started in 2008, has sent out a ‘Dear Readers’ letter announcing its closure. It measured its age as running from ‘two years after Twitter and two years before Instagram’ – a ‘new generation of arts magazines, in that era when internet culture was colliding with literar y culture in all kinds of exciting, alarming, unexpected ways. We wanted to create something which would be free to all, available online from anywhere in the world, and which would gather the best of the old and the new in surprising, playful combinations.’ The magazine was issued as a PDF. ‘Five Dials was sent into the world with a wr y, honest, democratic, self-deprecating and open-hearted voice.’ It was clearly a fun exercise and widely enjoyed by its readers. ‘As the years passed, we began to travel worldwide to launch issues in collaboration with festivals – in Cornwall, in Montreal, in Amsterdam, in Jaipur – shaping the issues to reflect their launch places and gathering new readers along the way. We even had our own stage at the Port Eliot Festival (co-founded by Simon a few years before). The famous live countdown to Craig pressing “Send” on his laptop was one of the highlights of ever y launch, as some of you may remember.’ Its stor y ends in hope, not defeat. ‘Now, after a decade and a half, we think the time has come to pass the torch – to close Five Dials and make space for all the new talent fizzing at the margins, where we once stood, ready to forge new channels and find new forms. We can’t wait to see what the next generation will do.’ The archive in full remains available at penguin.co.uk/five-dials-archive. ‘Next time you remember Svetlana Alexievich’s extraordinar y piece on Afghanistan, or Zadie Smith inter viewing Eminem, or Deborah Lev y’s alphabet of the death drive, it will be there, waiting for you to reread, or repost, or link to the friend who you know would love it.’ Sister tongues • Colin Bramwell writes: Aonghas Macneacail – or Aonghas Dubh, ‘Black Angus’ to the Gaels – was one of a select few writers in Scottish histor y whose work was written in all three tongues of Scotland. His writing in Scottish Gaelic – not just poetr y, but journalism, libretti, radio plays – made him famous in Scotland and beyond. He was known as a modernising influence on Gaelic-language poetr y, for embracing free verse and paying some heed to the popular American poetr y of the 1970s, but his work was just as steeped in a modern Anglo-Celtic lyricism, and owed as much to Sorley Maclean and Norman MacCaig as it did to Robert Creeley and Charles Olson. Earlier this year beyond, a new collection of poems in English co-edited by myself and his partner Gerda Stevenson, was published by Shearsman Books. These later poems reflect on nature, aging, politics and love. In ‘last night’, the poet describes a dream in which ‘my language would embrace / its sister tongue’; but Aonghas’s readers will know that this is no dream, rather an accurate enough description of the Scottish linguistic hybridity that Aonghas’s work spoke to, and for. Aonghas was born in Uig on Skye in 1942. The authoritarian religious atmosphere of his upbringing engendered the freedoms he took both on and off the page. His membership of Philip Hobsbaum’s writer’s group at Glasgow University led to lifelong friendships with other important Scottish writers of the last centur y: Alasdair Gray, Jim Kelman, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead. Towards the end of his life Aonghas spoke frequently about how important his membership of this group was to him. Much of the poet’s early work was composed in English, his language of education. An invitation to become writer-in-residence at Sabhal Mór Ostaig, Skye’s Gaelic college, renewed a commitment to his first language; a fellowship at Glasgow University reminded him to keep composing in English, too. Aonghas won the 1997 Stakis Prize for Scottish writer of the year, and the Saltire Society’s premier award, for his contributions to the intellectual life of his nation. These were significant. Although Aonghas didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a Gaelic writer, his work in this language is exceptionally

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Stanley let us persuade him to invite Neilson MacKay, who had worked with him, to subject him to a late inter view. The fruits of that labour are included in the current issue in the long, living conversation with a man so richly of his period, so candid and so provocative. A celebration, an introduction.

Goodbye to him. Ninety-nine still seems a young age for such a writer. His first poem in PN Review, in 1988, was an eleg y for his friend James Wright dying in hospital, which ends – and doesn’t end –

I kiss your hand and head, then I walk out on you past the fields of the sick and dying like a tourist in Monet’s garden.

Letters to the Editor

Up in smoke

Andy Croft writes: Smokestack Books is closing at the end of this year. The backlist will still be available to order, but Smokestack will no longer be publishing new books.

I set up Smokestack Books in 2004 with the aim of publishing poets a long way from the centres of cultural authority, especially oppositional, dissident, unfashionable and radical poets. Since then, Smokestack has sold over 65,000 books and published 237 titles, including books by John Berger, Victor Jara, Michael Rosen, Sylvia Pankhurst, Vernon Scannell, Linda France, Louis Aragon, Bertolt Brecht, Nikola Vaptsarov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yiannis Ritsos and anthologies of poetr y from Cuba, Greece, Kurdistan, France, Russia, Algeria and Palestine.

Smokestack was also a protest at the terminal dullness of so much of the contemporary UK poetr y scene, its self-importance, excitability, lack of seriousness and self-imposed isolation from the rest of society. But what was supposed to be a positive inter vention soon became a line of retreat, defeated by PR and lazy arts journalism.

During the past two decades, large sections of British economic life have been moved out of common ownership into private hands, rationed by price or simply closed down. The democratic process is blocked by inequality, authoritarianism, deceit and a narrow ideological consensus. In turn, British cultural life is blocked by the values of big business and show business.

The result is an atomised, unwelcoming and unfriendly poetr y scene whose inaccessibility is barely disguised by ritual declarations about diversity and inclusion. Conversations about poetr y have been replaced by conversations about poets, discussions of tradition by accusations of plagiarism, and the language of literar y criticism by the hyperbolic language of press-releases promoting corporate prizes and celebrity book-festivals.

After twenty years of running Smokestack unfunded, unpaid and single-handed, I have run out of good reasons to remain even on the margins of the uncomradely, uncongenial and frankly embarrassing world of contemporar y British poetr y.

Note: PN Review has invited Andy Croft to write a fuller account in a future issue of PNR of Smokestack’s histor y and achievements, and an extended analysis of the worlds of poetr y writing and publishing, as he experienced them.

Helen Vendler ventriloquised

Michael Allen writes:As usual, I enjoyed reading your editorial from PNR 278. However, something has gone wrong with one of its quotations. Helen Vendler advised my PhD and the quotation seemed out of character for her when I read it. When I looked it up in a scan of the New York Times, it looks like the words really came from a letter by Linda Grant, which makes more sense in context.

Michael Schmidt writes: Editorial apologies are due! When News and Notes for PN Review 149 were written in 2003, two letters had appeared in the New York Times. The first was by Helen Vendler, and to her I attributed the second, from Linda Grant. Two errors are now corrected with a single mea culpa, and histor y is put straight(er). With thanks to Michael Allen. This acknowl-

edgment sadly coincides with the death of Professor Helen Vendler in April of this year at the age of ninety. The New York Times obituar y was subtitled, ‘In the poetr y marketplace, her praise had reputation-making power, while her disapproval could be withering.’ The word ‘marketplace’ might have stuck in her craw. The obituarist continued, ‘In an era dominated by poststructuralist and politically influenced literar y criticism, Ms. Vendler, who taught at Harvard for more than 30 years, adhered to the old-fashioned method of close reading, going methodically line by line, word by word, to expose a poem’s inner workings and emotional roots.’ She would have pointed out the disconnect in this piece of journalism and have recognised the symptoms from which it proceeded.

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