Is it time, perhaps, to retire the slogan below - new poetry in a modernist tradition? Is there, perhaps, something ever so slightly ridiculous now about that "modernist" tag, reaching back as it does to a call to "make it new" that was issued more than 90 years ago, and that when literary modernism was already approaching (or maybe already well past - the definitions are inevitably various and vague) the start of its third decade? How can something that was self-consciously "modern" in the early 20th century still be modern so far into the next one? What would an Edwardian modernist have thought of identifying themselves with the tradition of Keats or Byron, Southey or Leigh Hunt? Did modernism expire in 1945 or 1950, as some claim? Is the name Molly Bloom enough in itself to mark the rough field we operate in here? Is there perhaps enough irony inherent in the phrase "modernist tradition" to stake out the territory effectively? Or do none of these (perhaps rhetorical) questions actually matter a tuppenny cuss? I'm not sure I care all that much, tbh - but if you do, maybe you'd care to suggest a better slogan for the magazine now not so much in your hands as at your fingertips.
Frankly, though, a better use of your time would be to browse the invigoratingly varied poetic offerings lined up in the menu to the left. Allow me to commend to you as a starter the words culled by Alan Baker on a return visit to his native Tyneside, arranged as Twitter sonnets, 280 characters each over 14 lines of 20, spaces and punctuation included. And while there, do not omit to play the audio files of him reading, which locate the poems firmly in both time and place - soundly following tradition while also making it new. You didn't get to hear the poets read in the original, print, issue of Molly Bloom; this is not quite the first time Molly online has included audible content, but it may perhaps be a pointer to a future direction. There is nothing else in this issue that wouldn't work equally well in print, but don't let that put you off. I am delighted and proud, for example, to be able to publish Janet Sutherland's first "longer piece" since Home Farm, which appeared from Shearsman a year ago and was one of the real stand-out books of 2019. The six poems here from the always engaging Steve Spence are, in my view, as good as anything of his I've seen - and lead on admirably, I think, to the two extraordinary new poems (modernist? perhaps; who really cares?) from Mark Howe, his first to appear in public since, as he puts it, he "gave up on publication more than three decades ago". Welcome back, Mark: I hope you will agree that you have landed in fine company.
Finally, is it possible so soon after a scrabrous UK general election, and in the very month the self-inflicted catastrophe of European divorce is finally upon us, to avoid the question of politics of the party kind? Well, yes and no. All the evidence of my eyes and ears these past few weeks and beyond suggests strongly that if the poets were in charge - if, say, the publication of a book or two of poetry were a prerequisite qualification for the suffrage - we would be living in a green-tinged socialist republic. Sadly, this is not the case. It seems we have been collectively poor in speaking truth to power; or power, at least, has stubbornly refused to listen. Is it consolation, solace or merely the evasion of responsibility that we should now gather here talking to each other? At least there is evidence here of the tradition moving on: such ur-modernists as Pound, Eliot, Yeats, Wyndham Lewis would not have been at home in this dissident political environment. Though the creator of the original Molly Bloom might have been.
Aidan Semmens, editor, January 2020
Is it time, perhaps, to retire the slogan below - new poetry in a modernist tradition? Is there, perhaps, something ever so slightly ridiculous now about that "modernist" tag, reaching back as it does to a call to "make it new" that was issued more than 90 years ago, and that when literary modernism was already approaching (or maybe already well past - the definitions are inevitably various and vague) the start of its third decade? How can something that was self-consciously "modern" in the early 20th century still be modern so far into the next one? What would an Edwardian modernist have thought of identifying themselves with the tradition of Keats or Byron, Southey or Leigh Hunt? Did modernism expire in 1945 or 1950, as some claim? Is the name Molly Bloom enough in itself to mark the rough field we operate in here? Is there perhaps enough irony inherent in the phrase "modernist tradition" to stake out the territory effectively? Or do none of these (perhaps rhetorical) questions actually matter a tuppenny cuss? I'm not sure I care all that much, tbh - but if you do, maybe you'd care to suggest a better slogan for the magazine now not so much in your hands as at your fingertips.
Frankly, though, a better use of your time would be to browse the invigoratingly varied poetic offerings lined up in the menu to the left. Allow me to commend to you as a starter the words culled by Alan Baker on a return visit to his native Tyneside, arranged as Twitter sonnets, 280 characters each over 14 lines of 20, spaces and punctuation included. And while there, do not omit to play the audio files of him reading, which locate the poems firmly in both time and place - soundly following tradition while also making it new. You didn't get to hear the poets read in the original, print, issue of Molly Bloom; this is not quite the first time Molly online has included audible content, but it may perhaps be a pointer to a future direction. There is nothing else in this issue that wouldn't work equally well in print, but don't let that put you off. I am delighted and proud, for example, to be able to publish Janet Sutherland's first "longer piece" since Home Farm, which appeared from Shearsman a year ago and was one of the real stand-out books of 2019. The six poems here from the always engaging Steve Spence are, in my view, as good as anything of his I've seen - and lead on admirably, I think, to the two extraordinary new poems (modernist? perhaps; who really cares?) from Mark Howe, his first to appear in public since, as he puts it, he "gave up on publication more than three decades ago". Welcome back, Mark: I hope you will agree that you have landed in fine company.
Finally, is it possible so soon after a scrabrous UK general election, and in the very month the self-inflicted catastrophe of European divorce is finally upon us, to avoid the question of politics of the party kind? Well, yes and no. All the evidence of my eyes and ears these past few weeks and beyond suggests strongly that if the poets were in charge - if, say, the publication of a book or two of poetry were a prerequisite qualification for the suffrage - we would be living in a green-tinged socialist republic. Sadly, this is not the case. It seems we have been collectively poor in speaking truth to power; or power, at least, has stubbornly refused to listen. Is it consolation, solace or merely the evasion of responsibility that we should now gather here talking to each other? At least there is evidence here of the tradition moving on: such ur-modernists as Pound, Eliot, Yeats, Wyndham Lewis would not have been at home in this dissident political environment. Though the creator of the original Molly Bloom might have been.
Aidan Semmens, editor, January 2020