A PERIODICAL FOR POETRY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 475, 30 July 1948, Page 8

A PERIODICAL FOR POETRY

POETRY QUARTERLY: WINTER 19471948. Edited by Wrey Gardiner. Grey Walls Press, London. HE urge to write poetry is stronger than the urge to write prose. It is accepted that poetry does not pay, but any‘ editor or publisher will tell you that this does not deter the poet or the would-be poet from writing it. Moreover, there are quite a number of publications. devoted to poetry. We haye them in New Zealand and Australia. No doubt some or most of them find the slopes of Parnassus a tangle of financial worry which obstructs the view, but they carry on bravely. In this number of the London Poetry Quarterly we notice that the Poetry Review, founded in 1909, is still going, with a new editor; that Poetry (Lendon) has appeared again after a long silence; and that there is a new periodical called Verse. The editor also mentions a new quarterly The Changing World, but it is not clear whether or not this is wholly devoted to verse. Poetry, says the editor, "is on the move." Many people would like to know where, and perhaps they will find some of the answer in Poetry Quarterly. There are 20 pages of ‘verse, and the rest is criticism of poets -past and present, including Richard Alding-. ton’s Poetry of the English-speaking World (which, by the way, contains nothing from Australia or New Zealand), and recent anthologies. 6f the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Brownings and Tennyson. It is interesting to note that the critic of these anthologies, like the editors, takes these famous poets seriously. The critici$m of this quarterly is scholarly and detailed. As one should expect from a journal devoted to poetry, the format is excellent.