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Saturday 31 July 2010

In the Box

Pleased to see I have extracts from a sequence of short poems called Time and Motion Studies appearing in the new edition of the excellent 'online forum' Blackbox Manifold':

http://www.manifold.group.shef.ac.uk/

There's an exciting range of poetry on there with some quite distinguished names (Sharon Olds, George Szirtes, Susan Wicks). What marks Blackbox out from other e-zines/magazines is their unusual interest in "innovative poetry that has prose, narrative or sequences in its sights." In other words, a determination to avoid the prevailing dominance of what James Byrne (in a Wolf editorial a while ago) called the "postage-stamp poem", that short, neat, undemanding lyric-poem invariably autobiographical or anecdotal in nature with which we are all only too familiar and which indicates the habitual lack of ambition and imagination so much mainstream poetry is prey to. 

   

2 comments:

  1. enjoyed yr poems and indeed yes . . . refreshing to go beyond the tightly shut objective correlative box!!! expansive mind: expansive language and so on . . .

    cheers,

    Marcus
    www.marcusslease.blogspot.com

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  2. Thanks Marcus,
    Its good to know someone else is taking a look other than my mates.
    I just checked out Never Mind the Beasts and added it to my Favourites, interesting stuff. I'm wholly ignorant about Polish poetry apart from the obvious names like Milosz and Herbert, I hope to learn more.
    Cheers,
    Oliver

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