FEATURES

Michael Brennan: "Chance and community might best describe how I edit and publish poetry. Chance in the unlikely alignment of latching onto good poems available for publication and that suit the nature of whatever I’m editing at the time. Community in the sense of a desire that whatever I am editing works toward allowing the formation of an integrated network of disparate voices, however temporary and transient." Mo!

Francis Raven interviews William Waltz, editor in chief of Conduit, “the only magazine that risks annihilation": "I’ve always loved books. I was reading before kindergarten. That must have had an impact. I started writing a “novel“ when I was in sixth grade. It’s probably a mixed blessing that I never finished The Lost City of the Everglades, my schoolboy Mount Analogue. Wo!

David Prater interviews John Tranter: "An insightful editor can stop a stupid manuscript from seeing publication, and force a flawed but brilliant one into print, as well as gently but firmly turn a sow’s ear of a manuscript into a silk purse of a book. They can also, if they have the qualities of a good general, take advantage of propitious times and harness the social energies around them." Jo!

Nick Whittock just goes from strength to strength. Not only have we just published his first book of poems, he's now started a hot new Ashes blog, right here on the Cordite site. Plus, just to show off, he's produced some very spekky images to go with the book and the tour. Your journey starts here!

EDITORIAL: "Usually I despise the practice whereby editors place their own work in an issue of the publication they're editing. Apart from denying a place to someone whose work is probably better, such actions often signal a kind of desperation, a "look at me" attitude or, to put it bluntly, a crude vanity best ignored, if not completely forgotten. All of which does little to explain the placement of one of my poems in the current issue of Cordite." D'oh!