Acumen 91, May 2018
Editorial
Poems: James Norcliffe, Susan Taylor, Mary Anne Perkins, Kathy Gee, Andy Armitage, Patrick Osada, David Callin, Ann Alexander, Anne Ballad, Kathy Gee.
Conversation – Peter Dale and William Oxley.
Poems: Myra Schneider, Shirley Bell, Clive Donovan, Gavin Collins, Edmund Prestwich, Bridget Thomasin, Cheryl Pearson, Ian Caws, Susan Sciama, Sean Street.
Responses
Poems: Elizabeth Barton, June Hall, Miki Byrne, Lynne Wycherley, Jill Boucher, Ernest O. Ogunyemi, Frances Sacket, Alwyn Marriage, Mary Anne Perkins.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Poet – S.A. Joyce.
Poems: Christine Griffin, Michael Newman, Patricia Leighton, Caroline Maldonado, Karla Van Vliet, Nigel Jarrett, Louise Wilford, Jason Irwin, Ken Taylor.
Walk Alone – a Glimpse of Tagore – Manjula Datta
Poems: Shanta Acharya, Sue Spiers, Keith McFarlane, Kathy Miles, Sally Sandler, Arthur Broomfield, Jacob Lotinga, Daichi Ishikawa, Ren Chun Ho, Simon Williams, Roy Cameron, Tim Cunningham, Matt Pitt, Gordon Scapens.
Reviews: Leah Fritz, Fred Beake, William Oxley, Glyn Pursglove, Keith McFarlane, Edmund Prestwich.
Poetry Comment: Glyn Pursglove
Erratum:
In Manjula Datta’s informative essay on Tagore, due to a computer error, the poem ‘Remember my song…’ only showed a couple of lines instead of the whole poem. It is such an evocative poem that the whole should be read, so here it is with apologies to Majula:
Remember my song
Amidst your happiness
When the autumn leaves were falling
The grass was dry, woodland bare
I was singing alone
My emotions voiceless
My life unsung,
Forsaken
Remember my song…..
Oh you day-travellers,
Remember me walking alone
In darkness of the night
Evening light in my hand,
When I heard the call from
The other side of the river
I was drifting alone in the river
In my broken boat
Remember my song…..
EDITORIAL
Thank you to all the readers who responded to questions raised in the
last issue: long poems, translations and writing about what you know. I
have published a selection in this issue and would add that Andrew
Knight’s long and detailed reply is published in full on the website, the
main points only being in the ‘Responses’ section.
It’s also been interesting over the past few issues of Acumento read
the responses to the Focus for Readers occasional broadsheets which
accompany some issues. Readers have asked for these to be used for
translations, long poems, more individual poets etc. But these Focus
sheets are exactly what they say they are: a focus on a particular topic or
poet. If they were used for one type of poetry only, they would become
stale; the contents might as well be incorporated in the magazine and they
would lose any focus which they might have had in the beginning.
The Focus on long poems and translations appear to have created
the most controversy. Long poems seemed to have split readers into three
opinions: those who feel they have no place in modern poetry, those who
feel such poems are ok but kept for collections where there is space for
them, and those who think the occasional one in a magazine is interesting.
Translations produce a similar division; those who feel that they
bring an added dimension and those who feel we have enough ‘homegrown’
poetry not to need translations.
