Saturday, October 21, 2017

The Wolf 35 (poem included but also refelctions of this last issue)

I am pleased to say that I have a poem, ‘Hap 2’ in The Wolf 35, one of my takes on the Petrarch translations of Sir Thomas Wyatt.

See here and here and here and here for more on my Petrarch obsession/project, including how to purchase Petrarch 3 from Crater Press. Read a doggie version of Petrarch's third poem here. But these, of course, come before the Wyatt poems in what is a sequence of sequences. I do read the first 8 or so 'Haps' here on video at the Sheppard Symposium, including the poem published in The Wolf, up to and including the ones just then completed.


It’s sad to say this is the last issue of the magazine but it is good to share it with Patricia Farrell, Chris McCabe, John Wilkinson, Robert Hampson, Antony Rowland, Ilya Kaminsky, Geraldine Monk, along with many other writers I’ve not met, AND a large number of students and former students who co-editor James Byrne have taught over the years at Edge Hill: Adam Hampton, Joanne Ashcroft, Jessica Tillings, Brendan Quinn, and Susan Comer (that's her art work on the cover above).

I’m also sad because I’ve appeared in The Wolf a number of times, and it's become a regular shelter, if not a home. I’ve written two reviews, one of Rosmarie Waldrop (not overlapping in any way with the chapter on her work in The Meaning of Form). That may be accessed here

And one of Christopher Middleton (which is a missing chapter from The Meaning of Form – the reader wanted it removed). I wrote about his poetry of the 1970s, and his poetics piece 'Reflections on a Viking Prow', but revised it for The Wolf; that can be accessed here and here

(Oliver Dixon has some nice things to say about it here. An introduction to The Meaning of Form and links to its formative pieces are found here.)

I have had a number of poems published, including the collaborative EUOIA poem written with Kelvin Corcoran,  the work of Eua Ionnou, (read her biography here.) in Issue 33, that also had a review of my History or Sleep: Selected Poems, by Nikolai Duffy. I write about that issue here.

A Wolf interview with me, conducted by Chris Madden still may be read here. In an earlier Wolf Chris had reviewed Berlin Bursts and gave an account of my reading at Bluecoat.This is the best and most searching interview with me!

So, all in all a long association with an even longer-running magazine, ably edited by James Byrne and by Sandeep Parmar, who has a review of Amali Rodrigo in this issue. Best wishes to them both!

James, in his editorial, promises further activity under the sign of THE WOLF, online. Watch that cyberspace!