Skip to main content

The Wolf Is Five!

The Wolf's subtitle is "The Magazine For New Poetry" - and, in Britain - it is.

I moved to London about four years ago. Poetry and English establishments being what they are, with all those competing class circles and cliques, the welcome was rough and cold at times - still is, in many ways. The Wolf, from my first months in the UK, was open to reading, and eventually publishing, my work.

If this was just about me, it'd be rather limited as an appreciation. But The Wolf has become, since founded in April 2002, by poets Nicolas Cobic and James Byrne, a truly indispensable small press publication for British letters and many writers - because it is marked by integrity, fierce independence, and a willingness to pretty much question every quietly held opinion and suggest new ways forward.

It provides a platform for many emerging, younger poets, who often have few alternative outlets in a publishing landscape that is cramped, conservative and too often pettily divisive for no good reason. Along the way, The Wolf has also published, reviewed, and interviewed, many major and established figures, too, and improved, year by year, its design, look, and feel, to the point where this, its 15th issue (Summer 2007), is distinctively indie in spirit, but stylish in appearance. Among the highlights of this 15th, special issue, are Niall McDevitt on Harry Fainlight (a wonderful meeting of two seriously brilliant, off-beam maverick poets), an interview with Saadi Youssef, and an unsigned, polemical and well-argued essay on the "in-clubs of poetry criticism". The Wolf is right to call for more informed, objective, and critical reviewery in Britain - too often all is puffery signifying nothing. Where is our Poetry and the Age?

I also have a poem in this issue - typically, for me in this magazine, a sonnet about the infamous good-time girl, Ms. Keeler.

Do support this most vital, young and honest of the UK's poetry magazines. Once bitten by The Wolf, one can no longer go back to being a sheep.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...
1 comment
Read more