In the late 70s into early 80s I was lucky enough to have two generous publishers/writers encouraging and supporting me as a poet, though I would be overstating to call them mentors. Jim Burns worked with me briefly over a week as a writer in residence when I was studying in Oxford, and thereafter he continued to encourage my writing, including publishing work in his magazine Palantir from 1980 to 1982, the last in Palantir 19 which was my first truly experimental poem The Chair and Quotations – experimental in that I used quotes from Henry Kissinger’s book The White House Years as well as the Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes from 1973. It is a poem about the Viet Nam war.

The other was Howard Sergeant, the editor of Outposts, and though he never published any of my poetry – and he was always honest that what I submitted was never quite what he wanted – his insistence that I continue writing and continue to submit was a significantly positive encouragement at that time. Sergeant did, however, publish a review of mine about Ted Hughes’ then latest poetry collection Moortown, as I recently referenced in my blog posting about Crow. This was in Outposts 125, in the summer of 1980 just before I began my first job teaching in Devon. As I mention in that Crow posting, I still balk a little at the presumption of being critical about Hughes, but having re-read I don’t feel I could, or should, have changed anything I said. I might have perhaps shifted to begin my focus on the positive then move to the more negative observations, but I can still recall how powerfully I felt about the poems I do criticise. I do think this was fueled by the way Hughes focused so much on these in his reading at Swindon which I had recently attended.

Here is the review: