PN Review at 50 - Part One

What does PN Review mean to you?

In honour of our 50th anniversary, we asked contributors and friends of PN Review what the journal means to them…

Rowland Bagnall: ‘PN Review helps to recharge my batteries; it refuels the tank so that writing can happen. With frightening consistency, it reminds me (as Ashbery writes of David Schubert) “of what poetry can be when the writing isn’t going well and one feels out of touch with the possibilities of poetry”.’

Iain Bamforth: ‘A decade of plaudits for PN Review: Anglospheric (read: plural “Englishes”), archipelagic (encompassing small islands), bimonthly (i.e. every other month), ), catholic (with a small see), dissentient (Manchester not London), European (tho’ Brexited), heterodox (but not heretical), monitory (O tempora! O mores!), newsworthy (of news “that stays news”), perduring (a G. Steiner praise-word).’

Sheri Benning: ‘For me, PN Review has become no less than a cherished home: a place of intellectual nourishment where the conversation challenges and inspires. I am made a better writer and reader by the community of its contributors, emboldened and less alone.’

Tara Bergin: ‘For ages I refused to use the initials ‘PN’ because the phrase Poetry Nation seemed too good to abbreviate. I wanted to write it on walls, scrawl it on postcards: ‘Greetings from Poetry Nation!’ It still captures for me the essence of PNR – new poetic territory: brave, independent, vibrant, shared.’

Sujata Bhatt: ‘PN Review remains one of the most open-minded, thought-provoking, exhilarating and discerning literary magazines I have ever encountered. It is my link to poetry and critical discourse from all over the world, not only in English but through translation in many other languages as well. The only danger being that once I start reading PN Review, I forget everything else and find it difficult to put it aside.’

Andrew Biswell: ‘I began reading PN Review 30 years ago and have never stopped. It was the serialisation of Les Murray's verse novel Fredy Neptune that got me hooked. The magazine introduced me to a wider world than the one I knew, a global compendium of poets and their translators. In an age of crude nationalisms, the journal distinguishes itself by being larger than the parish pump.’

Leo Boix: ‘PN Review was among the first literary magazines to publish my work. Its rigorous articles and incisive editorials, its illuminating essays and the sheer variety of poems and poets featured in the last five decades make PN Review my all-time favourite poetry journal. Happy 50th Anniversary! ¡Feliz aniversario dorado!’

Alison Brackenbury: ‘A rich magazine yields different plunder for every reader. I remember, with gratitude, the outstanding long poems I have discovered in PN Review, especially those by Tony Harrison, Carol Rumens, Czesław Miłosz and Anne Stevenson. I also admire the magazine’s ferocious independence in changeful times. Happy half-century!’

Miles Burrows: ‘PNR for me has been like a team with a tractor rescuing an old donkey stuck in a bog till he frisks away feeling like a young colt. A deus ex machina making unusual connections so that what seemed impossible comes alive.’

Stephanie Burt: ‘PN Review was the first "adult" (non-student) journal to publish my poems, the first magazine anywhere in the world that took me seriously as a poet, and for a journal with its history, that seriousness meant everything to me. Donald Davie and his colleagues had goals when they founded the thing in the 1970s, goals I've been honored and delighted over the years to see the journal meet and exceed: it's a place that takes poetry seriously as an art form whose parameters cross national, cultural and subcultural borders; that works to consider each poem on its own terms; that works to welcome oddity and difference without abandoning personal and intellectual judgments; a magazine that's still, 50 years later, inventing and discovering and bringing what's new and what's thoughtful into the world.’

Anthony Ezekiel (Vahni) Capildeo: ‘PNR is a work of art. The cover and the tactile paper are beautiful to handle, and to put into friendly hands. It’s light enough to carry on long trips; satisfying, on difficult travels. It whispers assurance: it’s worthwhile to sit with others’ words and worlds, for a breathing space.’

Thomas A. Clark: ‘I first came across PN Review in my local library in the early 1980s,
an astonishing discovery among the romances and the crime. Its intelligence and broad concern seemed promising…’

Joey Connolly: ‘At a time when the review sections of so many poetry platforms are lapsing into insular circles of mutual back-patting, PN Review has continued to offer a space for a robust and passionate engagement with contemporary poetry. It's of immense value for that alone, as well as for the host of other things it so crucially provides.’

Jane Draycott: ‘PNR to me = like a kind of electrical substation of imaginative energy, thoughtful and thought-provoking in equal measure, with searching things always to say about the possibilities of poetry and poetics.’

Sasha Dugdale: ‘PNR is a rare magazine, marked by seriousness and a deep engagement with poetics and wider literature. I owe a personal debt of gratitude to PNR and Michael for accepting and publishing work I was hesitant about – and so giving those pieces a life in print. I always relish reading PNR so to be included amongst its contributors is a huge and still surprising pleasure.’

Parwana Fayyaz: ‘PN Review forever gave me the purpose to keep writing poetry and remain on the journey for as long as words live in me, and I live by words.’

Lorna Goodison: ‘Issue # 13 of PNR, titled "Crisis For Cranmer and King James" and dedicated to the Book of Common Prayer, is one that Ted and I often refer to as an example of publication in service to humanity. That is true of almost every issue of PNR. There is no other magazine quite like it for its determination to illuminate whatsoever things are pure and lovely, and to challenge both the comfortable and the contrary in the world of words. Thank you, Michael Schmidt, for the presence of PNR in the world lo these fifty years.’

Sophie Hannah: ‘I adore PN Review. It was my first “poetry home”, the first place my poems were published, and it is totally wonderful and unique. Without a doubt, the most fascinating poetry magazine in the world!’

David Herman: ‘As the books pages of the newspapers get worse and worse, the value of small literary magazines like PNR grows and grows. First and foremost, PNR champions the best contemporary poetry. But it also publishes good critics and excellent reviews, often at length. Congratulations to Michael Schmidt and his editorial team.’

Mimi Khalvati: ‘If ever I feel despairing of poems – mine or others’ – and/or of the poetry world they inhabit and/or of the critical response – or lack of – they receive, then PNR is the perfect antidote to put that world to rights with its editorials, letters, features, reviews and, of course, its poems.’

Marius Kociejowski: ‘Depending on the morning it arrives, and whether I'm receptive to rescue, PNR is some sort of lifeline to somewhere.’

Grevel Lindop: ‘I grew up in PN Review and its precursors. Contributing to 1960s student magazine Carcanet, then to the 1970s hardback Poetry Nation, and ever since to PN Review, my life has been shaped by it, like the poetic life of our time. May it outlive me by another fifty years!’

Rachel Mann: ‘I know of no other periodical which so consistently shakes me from my complacency and disrupts my instincts towards literary dogmatism. Every couple of months, its appearance signals a kind of good trouble in my reading life. PN Review has never felt more essential.’

Robert Minhinnick: ‘For me, submitting poetry to PN Review was a major challenge. Actually having something published there was an extraordinary compliment. And it still is. I’m always grateful - and a little amazed - when and if my work appears there. Diolch yn fawr o Gymru! PNReview.’

Horatio Morpurgo: ‘Abdellatif Laȃbi’s “Letter to My Friends Overseas”, sent piecemeal from a Moroccan prison, was reassembled on the outside following his instructions. Right next to its English translation (PNR 230) is what Rodin said to Rilke ‘when we were leaving Chartres by train.’ PN Review unsettles every time. That’s why it’s a lifeline.’

Sinéad Morrissey: ‘In 1994 I was living in Germany, trying to improve my German, heal a broken heart and write better poems. I sent a few of them by post; included an international reply coupon (what days!). Waited weeks. Heard back. Yes, incredibly. A mainstay over three writing decades – PN Review, thank you.’

Jeremy Over: ‘First the regular happy arrival of the Hotspur with Absent Minded Albert, Catapult Kennedy and Limp Along Leslie, then a few adolescent years of silence before PNR came along and I learned to see through the apparent austerity to the adventures within of John Ashbery, Christopher Middleton, Friederike Mayröcker, etc.’

---

Subscribe to PN Review magazine at pnreview.co.uk.