Thursday, March 01, 2007

New Umbrella

The second issue of Umbrella is now up.

The first thing I’d say is that even before reading any of it, the whole look of this zine is enough to convince me that there’s bound to be good stuff inside. Looks, of course, can be deceptive, but in this case I doubt it.

The second thing is that there is some good stuff! I’ve only managed to read a tiny amount, as it’s just up today and there’s a lot of material. But the four poems by Matt Merritt, who is a HappenStance author and is behind the Polyolbion blog, are all very good.

Finally, I am in the prose section with a review of Tomas Tranströmer’s The Deleted World.

4 comments:

Matt Merritt said...

Thanks very much for the kind words and plug, Rob. Great review too - I keep hearing good things about Transtromer, so now the paycheque has cleared it's straight to Amazon to place a couple of orders. I think I've seen a decent Selected mentioned too, haven't I?

Rob said...

Cheers, Matt.

Transtromer has two Collecteds. He publishes very little (he's being going since the 1950s and his Collected Poems runs to only 250 pages) and consequently, what he does publish tends to be very strong.

I have The Great Enigma, a Collected in translation by Scottish poet, Robin Fulton. It's very good. There's also a Collected by Robert Bly - also good.

Matt Merritt said...

Thanks Rob. I'll have a look for those.
It's interesting that he's often translated by Scottish poets. I wonder if, at some level, they find it easier to tune in to his language because of Scots, Scottish dialects of English and Swedish all having a common ancestor in Old Norse.
Probably just total coincidence.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for pointing out Umbrella. Looks interesting.