NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

It's a labour of love at Lodge Farm near Stratford-on-Avon when it comes to sorting the poetic wheat (638 poems submitted in the first 40 days of 2006) from the chaff. Iota receives no outside funding and depends on sales and subscriptions to survive.

What are the editors Bob Mee and Janet Murch looking for? What's behind the smart cover with its freshly painted door and silhouetted cat? Perhaps the message is that subtle changes are afoot? Iota doesn't believe in standing still.

Virginian M. A. Schaffner's tough guy poem BRYN'S PLACE 3 A.M. hints at the answer:

	we died, or could no longer deny that death
	sat at the counter like a vampire friend.
	I have a few scars myself — nothing special,
	or even artfully done, but I miss 
	the smile of the owner

	and I think of dying. Losing all this.
		— And the words hunch away
	into the grind and rumble

	of the garbage truck, the road crew
	chewing up then laying down Water Street

Christopher James whose new collection THE INVENTION OF BUTTERFLY is now available provides a quintessential English diversion; a walk with a Lakeland ghost. His poem is WORDSWORTH ON WORDSWORTH:

	We passed over the step
	De Quincey once slipped on
	during a midnight rainstorm,
	shaving off an entire eyebrow

	If my prince was coming
	the wind in his horse's dappled mane
	and the buckles of his bridle would already be singing
	across the beet fields, unsettling 
	carp in the broad.

			beams steeped in tractor oil,
	where tight-fisted windows scrimp on light,
	there are lintels from the bows of ships
	and chimneys work hard coughing up 
	their lungs of soot for heat. She cooks

	it's always about 
	finding the new

	it's not enough to revamp the bay-window

	it's no good bouncing up and down 
	on the grounds that the earth 
	has moved a bit each time

	nor stepping into those same old rivers

	you have to start where nothing begins 
	or has begun.

In addition to the 50 or so poems in each edition there are always several pages of book reviews and a useful list of Poetry Festivals and other events.

A bargain at three quid I'd say.

Iota continues to publish good, well-crafted poetry. Its modest sized pages contain, mainly, one poem to a page, avoiding that crowded look some magazines have. If its plain format offers no surprises, the editors' choice of poems makes up for it. There are many quotable poems in this issue. Most of the names are new to me — refreshing perhaps? I particularly liked the sure handed prosody of Nell Grey's MY GRANDFATHER'S GARDEN

			had six beds
	the size of dinner plates,
	a wheelbarrow and a watering can
	painted on the fence, naked ladies among the tiger lilies.

	He hatched quick worms under the shed,
	left fox bones for the chickens,
	loved that garden like an itch or a wound.

	We dragged it up the beach like a black star
	our fingers sunk into its fibrous mass
	where it oozed black
	from ancient puncture wounds.

	Heavy and bloated it rolled along the bed
	too sodden and rotten to float
	coughed up and glad to be rid of it
	the sea retched a retreat.

	Being very polite, he might share his pomegranate with you, 
	looking for all the world like a sun in the subdued lighting —
	a four storey candle tower built up over twelve years
	by dripping reds and organges down an  empty bottle of Finlandia vodka