'In Excellent Shape'

Ian Parks author of
The Cavafy Variations

We were very pleased to see in today's Times Literary Supplement a review of a crop of new (ish) poetry pamphlets from the small presses that declared this tradition to be "still in excellent shape".  TLS reviewer Andrew McCulloch singled out two pamphlets from "the consistently reliable Rack Press", Nicholas Murray's Get Real! and Ian Parks's The Cavafy Variations.  The latter was a Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice this summer and the former, though now out of print can happily be found reprinted in Nicholas Murray's Acapulco: New and Selected Poems (2012, Melos).

In a very positive review of a good range of poetry pamphlets, the TLS reviewer described Get Real! as a "bravura display of finely controlled outrage" and of The Cavafy Variations it says Ian "captures the measured, graceful voice and quiet humour on which so much of Cavafy's poetry depends in a way that makes us feel we are hearing it properly for the first time.  This, you feel, is exactly what these poems would sound like if they had been written in English.  It is to be hoped Parks will return to Cavafy."

The occasion of such an extensive review of poetry pamphlets is the announcement next week (19 November) of the winners of the Michael Marks Awards.  Rack Press is one of five shortlisted for the publisher's award category.