PNReview 250
A collection to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth issue of PN Review.
Foreword by Michael Schmidt, Editor of PN Review
The life expectancy of poetry magazines is often a butterfly’s span. Few reach ten issues, fewer still a hundred. To reach 250 issues over five decades is evidence of editorial tenacity and conviction. The twenty-five poems collected here are by poets who have been part of a long journey which has included an IRA bomb that destroyed the editorial offices in 1996, the turn of a millennium, the birth of the electric typewriter, the laptop computer and digital media, and much more. Four of the poets here featured in the very first issue of Poetry Nation (1973), and four feature in the 250th issue (November-December 2019). Paul Muldoon said, ‘It’s been going so long that many of us have all but forgotten what the P and the N stand for. I think of them as opening and closing the word Provocation. And that’s why I so love the magazine.’ Here are poets who saw service in the First and Second World Wars and others who are relative newcomers on the poetry stage. Voices speak from the four corners of the Anglophone world. The poems celebrate risk and continuity. We celebrate with twenty-five memorable discoveries and epiphanies.
On Not Writing As A West Indian Woman - Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo
Elegy for a Soldier - Marilyn Hacker
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era - Oli Hazzard
Inscription for a Scented Garden for the Blind - John Heath Stubbs
Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits - Elizabeth Jennings
The Polar Explorer’s Love Song - Bill Manhire
Elegy of the Flowing Touch - Christopher Middleton
What the evangelist should have said - Kei Miller
1801
Read by Sinead Morrissey
1801 - Sinead Morrissey - Read by Sinead Morrissey
You’ve Ruined My Evening / You’ve Ruined My Life - Tom Raworth
Rhapsody on Red Admirals - Edgell Rickword
Snakeshead Fritillaries - Anne Ridler
A Rose for Janet - Charles Tomlinson
by Jane Yeh