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In The Criminal's Cabinet

I often wonder what's going on with the wide world of poetry - and how despite the best efforts of many hard-working poetry activists, editors and so on there is the same sort of apathy we associate with high school election speeches.

Basically: is there really a global poetry community that is aware of its constitutent members, and works hard to locate, cultivate, and support them and their works? Maybe not.

Take, for example - or Exhibit A, if you will - a recent (late 2004) global English-language Internet-driven anthology of mostly avant-garde or at least indie poetry and prose edited by myself and Val Stevenson (see Nthposition link to order): In The Criminal's Cabinet.

So, very few mainstream reviews, and not that many sales so far. But consider some of the poets included - and the fact that it represents very new poetry, all written between 2002-2004:

Robert Allen, Tammy Armstrong, Louise Bak, Charles Bernstein, bill bissett, Stephanie Bolster, Jason Camlot, Maxine Chernoff, Todd Colby, MTC Cronin, Jennifer K Dick, Isobel Dixon, Peter Finch, Brentley Frazer, Philip Fried, Ethan Gilsdorf, Giles Goodland, Daphne Gottlieb, Jen Hadfield, Steven Heighton, Kevin Higgins, Paul Hoover, Ranjit Hoskote, Jill Jones, Norman Jope, Jayne Fenton Keane, Roddy Lumsden, Alexis Lykiard, Valeria Melchioretto, Nessa O’Mahony, Richard Peabody, David Prater, Sina Queyras, Srikanth Reddy, Ali Riley, Peter Riley, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Rebecca Seiferle, Ron Silliman, Hal Sirowitz, Sean Street, Rodrigo Toscano, Alison Trower, Paul Vermeersch, John Hartley Williams, and Max Winter (among many others equally fine).

That's a pretty good list eh?

I think this anthology deserves better. I mean, the review in Verse was great, but, other than a few blog mentions, that's been about it. But perhaps it is the fate of small press ventures to generally be swatted away by market-place indifference.

Be that as it may, the book is waiting for those who want to support the grass-roots efforts of sites like Nthposition.

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