Advanced studies in poems of the light and of the dark

Part 3 of a trilogy of articles in which Andrea T Judge discusses the history and evolution of lyric and epic poetry and what they mean to us today.

It is only a trick of the historical lens that leads us to see philosophy as a discipline separate from the sciences. Originally the word meant 'lovers of knowledge', and it certainly did not restrict these thinkers from fields like astrology, physics, biology and mathematics. The efforts of men in many ways ill-equipped to understand the world were sometimes misguided or insufficient, but in their own way, they could be illuminating. The most interesting of their theories, in terms of our studies in poetry, are those most ambitious and aggrandising: their ideas on what the universe was composed of and how it worked.

Specifically, we are interested in the theories of those among the Greeks who were looking for the essence of the universe – those who sought that mysterious spirit you got when you reduced all difference from the tangible world, that which we all have in common. In poetic terms, these men were seeking 'O'. Of course, the great paradox of studying 'O' is that you are essentially studying nothing. The 'O' represents the void; it is a form self-same from every angle, and even back then it meant nothing as a word. What is remarkable is not that the worldview of the Greeks discovered the 'O' as the end of difference, rather the other way round – that in order to understand the universe and everything about it, the Greeks thought the best method would be to seek the end of all difference. Their guiding principle of science and cosmology was directed by 'O', rather than by demonstrable observations of the world around them – so much so that when Leucippus and Democritus developed atomism, a conceptual precursor of atomic theory, it had no empirical evidence to back it up. After the classical ages, it fell into oblivion for almost two millennia.

To the extent that 'O' also means death, it seems less audacious to see it as the telos (the 'end') towards which philosophies were naturally directed. And atomism, the doctrine dictating that everything in the world is subdivided into equal, indestructible, unchangeable atoms (allowing only for some slight differences in their shape), was a quest strictly informed by the tension between both the 'O' and the 'I'. On one hand, it sought the essential 'stuff' that everything is made of, the material of each atom (or, the atom for all materials), which is the 'O'. On the other, by propounding an equal individual unit as the component of the universe, Democritus was postulating 1, which is also 'I'. And 1 is not the end of difference, but its fundamental building block: Democritus saw an 'I' in the universe. He saw a difference. For 'I' is difference itself, much as 'O' is the end of difference. And the atom was the predicate of both difference and non-difference.

This becomes of poetic interest when we compound it with some of the other directions taken by the Greeks in their quest to follow 'O' (and 'I') and find the essence of the world. By far the most popular cosmological philosophy of the time was the theory of the four elements developed by Empedocles, which would later be picked up by Plato and Aristotle. Arising at a similar time as atomism, it stated that the universe was composed of four elements (air, fire, water, earth), and that combinations of these four elements produced all the objects of the world. Inasmuch as these four elements represent not objects but the common substance of objects, they are, of course, a rudimentary expression of 'O'. More importantly, they provide a unified groundwork for a study not so much of the sciences, but of poetics and poetic imagery. For it is not hard to imagine that Empedocles, had he set himself to literature, would have argued that all the great classical poetic images – the sea, the sky, the clouds, sunlight, dust, rain – were no more than raw forms of the four elements. Traditional tropes of poetry like, say, the sea, the wind, or darkness, to the extent that they possess qualities of non-difference (they are endless, fractal, lacking defined boundaries, substantially unstable, mutable and shapeless, equal in all parts), are indeed signifiers for 'O'. Now if the language of lyric poetry has traditionally demonstrated particular concern with these images and tropes, and these tropes in turn are expressions of 'O', then does this suggest that there is a link between what we know as lyric poetry and the telos of the 'O'?

There are several words which Empedocles would have reconnected to the four elements – the words 'sea', 'river', 'rain', 'vapour', 'foam' are forms of water. 'Dust', 'ash', 'mud', 'clay', 'rubble', 'mountain', 'stone' are forms of earth. 'Wind', 'mist', 'fog', 'breeze', 'clouds', 'smoke' stand for air. 'Light', 'sun', 'flame', 'heat', 'warmth' are all of fire. What follows from Empedocles' suggestion is that it is possible to represent O linguistically. Words describing objects which have qualities of blurred borders, equality of composition, undefined temporality will all ring with the sound of 'O'.

The personification of the four elements and all their natural predicates was assigned, by the Greeks, to gods and goddesses – a very obvious way of counterpoising an 'I' to the naturalistic expression of the 'O.' As an individual, a god/dess is necessarily an 'I' in every sense – of word, letter or sign. You had a god/dess of the sea, of the heavens, of the wind, of each individual river. Anything that was non-differentiated and ascribed to the 'O' (including, say, death or love) was given an equivalent in the dimension of the 'I'. As representatives of the 'I' (and like everyone who can say 'I'), gods have an agency, and the attempt to invest agency onto natural phenomena with no agenda was an aspect of the tension between 'I' and 'O'. This ties in to the fact that ancient lyric poetry is most commonly addressed to the gods, from the Greek representatives to the poetry books in the Bible. After the dark ages, when writing returned to Europe in a predominantly Christian scenario, lyric poetry was no longer allowed to address multiple gods and allegorical figures were introduced. Characters like 'Lady Love' or 'Lady Philosophy' are elementary examples of an alliterative tradition which remains unique to the middle ages. Then came Dante's Beatrice and Petrarch's Laura, and from then on, the default addressee of lyric poetry evolved away from a divine force and towards the figure of a loved one.

Thus the 'I' and the 'O' evoke each other in what is known as poetry of address (often considered a synonym for lyric poetry – an ill-advised affiliation, as we will see). The 'O' is produced simply by placing speech against an 'I'. Calling the god or goddess or beloved necessarily implies an 'O', even if it is not explicitly written. Rimbaud's "O pale Ophelia" and Leopardi's "Silvia, do you remember..." are not substantially different – you can extract the first letter from the former line and add it to the beginning of the other, and it makes no difference. Unless the preponderance of the 'O' is reverted by the poet later in the text (for instance, by rejecting or condemning the addressee, as Baudelaire does when spitting "Hypocrite reader!"), the poem will stay under the domination of the 'O' and therefore remain lyric throughout.

The fact that 'O' can be represented linguistically suggests that the same could be done with 'I'. But while words like 'dust' and 'clouds' can be linked back to 'O', the words representing 'I' must possess, like the gods, an agency, and this can seldom be achieved with nouns. First names, which imply someone who can say 'I', are a better option. More flexibly, you can use words which perform agency and action linguistically. The most common example of this are verbs. A verb, as something that acts but can never be acted upon, is the kinetic element of the sentence and is therefore most easily associated to 'I', which is constitutive but never constituted. There are of course plenty of exceptions. Inactive verbs like dying and surrendering are related to 'O' (and are, in fact, typical themes of lyric poetry). Conversely, some verbs are inflexibly active – fighting, destroying, winning. Others yet, the vast majority, determine their active or inactive quality by the context of use – burning can refer both to 'burning the houses of the enemy' and to 'burning in the flames of the enemy'.

We mentioned that a lyric poem is a poem dominated by the 'O'. Given the potential 'I' quality of verbs, then, one of the simplest labels of the lyric is the transition from 'I' to 'O' – that is to say, starting a phrase with an active verb and closing it with a signifier of 'O'. Here are some very famous examples, with signifiers for the 'I' in bold and signifiers for the 'O' in italics:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)
These thoughts that wander through eternity ... (John Milton)

O thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars! (Christopher Marlowe)

A more complicated version of the same basic effect:
I am no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils
A mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand. (Sylvia Plath)

Here, the succession of verbs and elements makes for a (surprisingly regular and very harmonious) I-O-I-I-O-O sequence – fundamentally, still a transition from 'I' to 'O'.

We also note in the quote by Milton that it is not a 'natural element' that stands for the 'O', but 'eternity', a word about time. This is not a distortion of the original concept. Time is a category which makes its own distinction between 'I' and 'O' signifiers: 'now' and 'today', as platforms for individualisation and specification, belong to the 'I'; 'forever', 'never', 'always' and the like all stand for the 'O'. The exact same is true of space, where 'here', 'there' stand for the 'I', and 'nowhere' or 'everywhere' for the 'O'. Numerical or quantitative words fall under the same rules. See Blake's opening to the poem 'London', which is a typical case-study for the lyric sentence-structure: "I walk through every chartered street." (Note, in passing, that this is an example of a lyric without an addressee, showing that equating poetry of address to the concept of the lyric is illusory). But perhaps the best example of how a temporal category can be used to produce the lyric is given to us by Edgar Allan Poe in his celebrated text 'The Raven', with the repetition of 'nevermore' following upon every line and therefore closing every stanza with an 'O'.

Since one way of achieving the lyric is by a transition from 'I' to 'O' signifiers, then inverting the order of those signifiers will produce the opposite result – and this is what we call the epic effect. The passage from 'O' to 'I' results in a feeling which is the absolute opposite to that of the lyric – a sense of exhilaration rather than tenderness and melancholy. For instance:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul. (William E. Henley)

This is the opening stanza to a short poem called 'Invictus', renowned for its epic atmosphere. It is composed of four stanzas, all of which repeat the effect of the first – the transition from the 'O' signifiers in italics to those of the 'I' in bold. The last two lines end with a repetition of active verbs next to words indicating agency: "I am the master of my ship, I am the captain of my soul." A real epic combo.

Though the institutionalisation of the term 'lyric' as synonymous for poetry since Petrarch, as well as the failure to extricate the structure of the epos from the canons of the epic genre, have led to a difficulty in identifying the binding quality of epic poems, these texts are in fact much more common than we expect. Almost every poet writes verse of an epic as well as a lyric kind. Poems which are usually dumped into the category of the lyric, even which are famed as illustrious examples of that field, may reveal themselves to be manifestly epic, notwithstanding traditional lyric 'symptoms' such as an addressee. Shelley's celebrated 'Ode to the West Wind' is a prime example. It opens with a wealth of 'O' signifiers ('being', 'ghosts', the death imagery of the seeds, 'stream', 'sky', 'clouds', 'Heaven', 'Ocean', 'rain', the 'aery' surge, the 'dying year', the 'closing night', 'vapours', 'summer dreams', 'sleep', the 'sense [which] faints') and gradually introduces a speaker – an 'I', first introduced in Part IV – which becomes increasingly pervasive. This transition, encapsulated in the poem's closing line ("If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?") is the defining quality of the epic, much like the opposite transition is that of the lyric.

Consider these two lines from Shelley's poem:

"Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"

While the words tend towards the lyric (the final verbs are passive), they do include yet another example of the poem's epic drive – the passage from saying 'me' to saying 'I'.

'I' and 'me' are both signifiers of the self, but they define it respectively as the subject or object of the sentence; a linguistic passage from object to subject ('O' to 'I') is the equivalent of an epic transition, while one from subject to object ('I' to 'O') is lyric. This opens up the world of pronouns to the possibilities of the epic and the lyric. The objective case belongs to the 'O', while the subjective case belongs to the 'I'. So most poems using 'I' towards the beginning and closing with 'me' towards the end will tend to be lyric, and vice versa for the epic (note the pronouns in the above quote by Henley). The same can be said of individual lines: "I do not think that they will sing to me." (Eliot, from the Prufrock poem). But the principle holds true across the first, second and third person as well. So a poem starting with 'us' and closing with 'I' will be epic (the distinction between 'thou' and 'thee' has decayed, so the case of 'you' is contextually determined). Here is a sensational example: "How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?" From subjective case to objective case, and we have a lyric line. Note that in this passage from the Book of Psalms (one of the world's most ancient collections of lyrics) the signifiers for 'I' and 'O' are multiple, including various verbs and 'for ever' alongside the pronouns.

It should be clear by now that the tools available for poets to produce these two cardinal effects are numerous. Others which we shall only gloss over include:
a) Repetition. See Sylvia Plath's queen bee: "she is old, old, old." Repeating the word nullifies its specificity, and therefore ties it to 'O'.
b) Conjunctions like 'and', 'or' can nullify the value of difference between words, also relating them to 'O' – "I am: yet what I am none cares or knows." (John Clare). Starting a phrase or line with 'And' is the equivalent of starting it with the vocative 'O'.
c) Other active uses of pronouns. For example, if the pronoun 'my' is followed by an object internal to the speaker and a verb: "My heart aches" (Keats); "My nerves are bad tonight" (Eliot). In both cases it is lyrical, because the sentence implies an opening verb of perception: "[I feel] my heart/nerves/etc."
d) Logographic tricks, like never using capitalisation to imply that all the words are equal in value.
e) The use of symbols, which, like gods, are implicit signs of the 'I'.

The possibilities are multiple and well beyond our ability to list them all. One last effect would cause a wealth of confusion if left unexplained, so we shall point it out before closing – the idea that the lyric and epic effect of a phrase can be reversed by the simple use of negatives. An inspirational phrase like "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them" (Exodus, 20:5) has a clear epic ring to it – it sounds like the kind of thing you use at sport rallies – yet it passes from an active verb ('shalt') to a passive one ('serve') and from subjective case to objective case pronouns. This would file it under the category of the lyric. The trick lies in the fact that the negatives 'not' and 'nor' nullify the value of the verbs and in fact reverse their effects: 'shalt not' becomes passive, while 'nor serve' is now active. The 'I'-to-'O' transition is negated and flipped onto its head to become an 'O'-to-'I'. The sentence, then, becomes epic. It is a comparatively minor detail, perhaps, but the power of negation is not to be underestimated. The lyric turns to which it can lead are among the simplest you can imagine:

"To be, or not to be. That is the question." (William Shakespeare)

Andrea T Judge grew up in Rome and has studied literature in the UK and the Caribbean. He has worked as freelance critic of movies and games, as translator in Germany, and as sports journalist in France (where he made money by dressing up as a cartoon in Disneyland). He has also kept up a blog of rants and cultural criticism at The Rant Machine. He is currently employed on cruise ships in the Caribbean.

Interview: Michael Curran

Michael Curran is the man behind kicking, screaming publishing den Tangerine, the home-bound hardback joy Dwang and the promotion of insolent and exciting poetry. We ambushed him down a dark alley...







Could you give us a brief rundown of Tangerine's birth and evolution?

Well, to go way back, it all began with a book mail order company I ran between 1996 and 98. This was called Tangerine Books. I championed small press publications, primarily from the USA, as they had it down. It was my full-time occupation, though I needed an evening job to get by—cleaning aeroplanes at Heathrow, telephone surveys, kitchen porter, etc. Tangerine Books did not work so I threw 500 unused catalogues and a sluggish pc into a skip and entered the construction industry. But the itch was still there. So in 2006 I started Tangerine Press. William Wantling’s poetry was the inspiration to start publishing. I am eternally grateful to a man I shall never meet. Tangerine's roots seem to lie firmly in counterculture, and Dwang especially has a strong 1960s feel. Do you have a mantra in mind that reflects this when you're selecting, editing, writing etc.?

Tangerine is all about the counterculture, the underground scene. Occasionally it goes overground. The 1960s feel is something I had not thought about. I just like the look of certain publications, in particular Loujon Press’s The Outsider; also Spero, Wormwood Review, dust, Second Coming, so maybe that observation makes sense. My mantra in publishing is this: mix it up. No limits on subject matter, style, etc. Dwang, the yearly journal I publish, says it all. Where else would you find that dirty boozy bastard Joe Ridgwell published alongside Praemium Imperiale winner Richard Long?

What do you feel is successful and wanting in current poetry publishing?

There seems to be a more discerning publishing scene out there, that will not just publish anything. Care over presentation is equally impressive. Many small presses are letterpress printing too: Blackheath Books, Kilmog Press, Bottle of Smoke Press, X-Ray Book Co, etc. Wanting? The same it has always been: mainsteam publishing is a rotting carcass.

William Wantling and Billy Childish, two Tangerine favourites, must have, in their respective ways, presented interesting editorial questions and challenges. What did you enjoy and what tested you when putting together their collections?

Wantling certainly opened my eyes to what was possible with poetry. He experimented with different forms: sonnets, haiku, as well as the free verse style popular in the underground scene. He made the other stuff seem okay. He is known for powerful poems on the Korean War, heroin addiction, San Quentin Prison, but in putting together the two-volume celebration in 2008, the idea was to subtly show off that vision, that scope, the sheer breadth of his talent. He was undoubtedly a flawed poet and I did include some pieces I was not so keen on. But I thought: this is a career, with highs and lows, and I decided to leave it all in and let the reader decide. This is the impression I got of him as a man too: genuine but flawed.

After publishing the Wantling books, I was stuck on what to do next. I had published an obscure, dead US poet, now I wanted to publish an obscure, living English poet. Billy Childish was the only person I could think of, but thought it was impossible, as he published his own work with Hangman Books. However, after I invited him to contribute work to the first Dwang journal, there began talk of a book. I have been reading Billy’s work for many years and always admired his honesty and not shying away from any subject. Having met him many times during the course of putting the book together and, to a certain extent, getting to know him, the poetry took on another dimension. The ‘cult’ had become human, if you like. So the poems were more immediate and on occasion felt too personal to be reading. In addition, Billy’s dyslexia was a challenge. Proof reading blew my head off. I began misspelling and not trusting my own judgement on grammar. It was a very intense time working on that book.

Each publication is lovingly made and juggles looking professional with a warmth and uniqueness. How did you learn to bookbind and what is important to you about design in books?

Design and certainly binding by hand adds a very sensual element to reading a book. There is the story of the writer at the forefront, of course, but the binder/publisher has a presence too. That is what appealed to me about the Loujon Press publications. You can feel Jon and Lou Webb in the books, you can imagine them discussing the poems, taking breaks from printing and you can certainly feel their sorrow, relief and elation at the completion of a book. I often think how a poem hangs on the page is like the appearance of a door. It has to look right, balanced. With a well designed and bound book, you do not need to read the poems to know they are good. I spent five years in the Tibetan mountains, learning to bind books. With monks. If I made a mistake, they would beat the soles of my feet. I never spoke in all that time.

Who would be your dream Tangerine poet or poets?

In the four years I have been doing this, I have published my dream poets: Wantling, Childish, Voss. In terms of proper dream poets, as in they are dead, I would have loved to have been involved with Robinson Jeffers, Raymond Carver and Akiko Yosano. The latest issue of Dwang features a stunning long cartoon sequence, almost like a flickbook animation? Did you consider giving over such a huge chunk of the book to one sequence a risk, and what attracted you to the piece?

Yes, Kelsie’s cartoon did feel a risk of sorts. Only in terms of length, as it merits publication on its own. I was not sure if Kelsie would be interested in having his 40 year old cartoon-story reprinted in this way, as part of a journal. I am grateful he did. He is an extraordinary man and I feel privileged to know him. At the time of writing, Kelsie has tried ringing me a few times, from Reno, Nevada. He keeps calling at odd times in the evening (last night 3am, for long chats about the underground scene, Loujon Press, etc) but I have to be up at 6.30am for work, so it is proving difficult. Hopefully we can sort this out. The cartoon is extraordinary in its simplicity. I was profoundly moved by it—I had no choice in the matter. It tackles everything and draws you in. It still amazes me that he was only 19 years old when he created it.

Are you writing a great deal yourself?

I have to admit, I am one of those despicable creatures, someone who writes poetry and also feels he can judge what good work is as a self-styled editor. No, I am hardly writing anything at all. The work I receive for Dwang and the other books I publish just consumes me and I welcome it.

How on earth do you find time to run all of these projects and what motivates you?

I find the time because I want to. It is there. My motivation is to put out great writing in the best way I can, while I can. If I did not do this, you would probably find me on a bench in Tooting Bec Common, drinking cider and gently rocking, rocking.

I see you're planning a new Billy Childish collection. What else does the future hold for yourself and the Press?

Yes, there will be a new poetry collection with Billy later this year. He found a number of unpublished poems from the early 1980s, I assume as part of going though material for this year’s ICA retrospective. We went through them and decided there was enough good material for a collection. There will be a third Dwang next year, due May 2011. I am still deciding what book to publish in November 2011. After that, I will be taking a break. I intend to have a mass book burning of all unsold Tangerine publications in 2013. In which case, you may well find me on that bench in Tooting Bec Common.

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For more information, investigate the equally delicious and mischievous collections available to buy from Tangerine Press.

Dream Jobs and Reality: Poetry in the Workplace

Chrissy Williams discusses her new line of work: digitising a century's worth of printed poetry at the Southbank Centre Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall in London. 

The first time I entered the Poetry Library as an official employee I felt like I was walking into Oz: everything suddenly turned into colour, becoming more fantastical and vivid than before.

Explaining my new job at the Poetry Library to people who have no interest in either poetry or books has been interesting: "No, you don't stamp the books in rhyme"; "No, I haven't made tea for Carol Ann Duffy"; "No, I don't take my glasses off and shake my hair out for Andrew Motion". I have a long history in editorial work (in educational, children's and mass-market reference books, videogames magazines, and even makeover "bookazines" – if you don't know what those are, you're lucky), and some people expressed surprise that I was giving up my tangible career path in favour of something they deemed to be "less ambitious". In previous editorial job interviews, when asked, "What would be your dream project?" I'd always answer, "Something to do with poetry?" and wait for the inevitable hysterical laughter. Other people, however, understood exactly what this new job would be like: heaven.

For starters, even without the poetry, the workplace is wonderful. I've got a lovely view of Somerset House and a bit of the Thames out of the window. Covent Garden's just over the bridge. There's free tea and coffee, shiny new stationery and whimsical internal emails from the Southbank Centre asking things like "Do you want to take part in our production of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or "Fancy abseiling down Capital Tower?" Colleagues are all helpful, polite and friendly. My chair is comfy and adjustable. I have more staples than I know what to do with. I'm already in employment bliss.

My job title is Digitisation Coordinator and I look after the online Poetry Magazines archive at www.poetrymagazines.org.uk. For the most part, I digitise physical magazines, putting the content onto the website and proofreading it before it goes live. I'm not actually working behind the front desk though; I'm tucked away in the office (I have received the front desk training, however, and can confirm that stamping books with the big "cha-chung" date stamp is as completely thrilling as my 10-year-old self suspected it might be – "Look, Mum, I'm a li-bra-ri-an!").

The digitisation itself is very systematic work which I suppose could technically be described as "rather tedious". Everything has to be done in order, one step at a time: saving and labelling files, scanning pages, extracting text and images and reformatting them for the web, not to mention actually entering the content onto the website in tiny chunks, split into title, author, publication, poem, and so on, before proofreading the whole lot. It's odd to be so entirely governed by short, repetitive administrative tasks in a workplace that centres on a creative art, but I actually find it immensely satisfying. There's a structural purity to the tasks, and the goals in sight are obvious and attainable.

My primary concern is that each poem is reproduced faithfully, making an accurate transition from page to screen. The difference in spacing and size between two different fonts (the one in the magazine and the one on our website) can mean the difference between clarity and obscurity, so everything needs very careful attention. I've caught myself looking at poems to assess at a glance how easy they'll be to translate into online text. Formalist lyric poetry is generally no problem. Experimental free verse that dribbles down the page with multiple spaces, inconsistent tabs and an assortment of typographical oddities is the only material I deal with that brings on a sensation approximating anxiety.

In addition to the systematic entering and proofreading of work, I also generate keywords and phrases that will help our search engine locate each poem. With each piece I have to ask myself: "What would someone want to search for in order for this poem to be a useful result?" It's an interesting exercise in comparing the different ways poems communicate meaning, and I've added all sorts of keywords, from "death" and "divorce" to "tigers" and "Ben and Jerry". To look at it coldly, I'm simply assigning keywords to web pages after paying close attention to abstract data. To look at it another way, I get paid to spend a reasonable portion of my days reading poetry.

Of course, it's frustrating that the whole process is such a drawn-out one. When you combine the digitisation, uploading and proofreading processes with the business of clearing copyright with each individual poet, you can imagine how complicated it can get, especially when some of the magazines have been out of action for 30 years or more, and some of the poets dead for even longer.

The collection is building up, however, and reflects the diversity of poetry magazines, from the first ever issue of Poetry Review (published in 1912 with reviews of trifling contemporary books like Ezra Pound's Canzoni) to poetry packaged in matchboxes (Matchbox ran from 2006 to 2008).

Forthcoming additions include the bizarrely compelling 1970s magazine Strange Faeces and a 1926 copy of Oxford Poets featuring poems by W. H. Auden and Cecil Day-Lewis. And these don't even begin to touch the wealth of amazing poetry magazines housed within the Poetry Library's main collection.

I expect people come to the site for all sorts of reasons. Some will just want to find poems about dogs, some will want to research specific poets, others will want some help and information on getting their poems published in magazines. The site is useful for all of these purposes. Having these magazines online means people can read them even if they're not able to come into the Poetry Library itself. It's not about replacing books or magazines – we never put up issues that are too recent without the editor’s consent, as we don't want to interfere with magazine sales. In fact, the feedback we have had from editors is that their magazines having a strong online presence actually increases sales of the physical magazine. We're slowly building a digital archive in the same way that we have a physical archive in the Library – a collection that's freely accessible to anyone who wants to look at it. Imagine if we got a million pounds tomorrow, enough to hire a small army of digitisers, enough to put every archived magazine online, so that every single poetry magazine published since 1912 was right at your fingertips. You can't see, but I'm actually salivating right now at the thought.

For me, the essence of the work is simple: I've arrived at the Emerald City and been given a job by the Wizard(s). It's a daily pleasure not only to be surrounded by poems from floor to ceiling, but to have a hand in creating a home for them, making it easier for people to find, enjoy and be inspired by poetry. I fear all this has made me sound a bit idealistic. It's probably because I am.

Visit the Poetry Magazines website here: www.poetrymagazines.org.uk