NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Pennine Platform is a beautifully produced A5 journal oozing sophistication from between the deceptively simple covers. From the charcoal picture on the front cover to the two line notes on contributors at the back, the entire aim is to do as the title suggests: give poetry the platform. Edited by Nicholas Bielby, contributors include the well known, such as Fred Johnstone and the experimental, like Matt Dalby.

The selection of poetry within is wide and varied. The Editorial is a provoking discussion of education and its place in creating and maintaining national identity in the UK.

The first poems of the journal grabbed my attention, in particular the way in which Oliver Andrew combined archaeology and aging in EXCAVATING A MIDDEN. The implications of an ancient race that were:

	slurping oysters from dawn to dusk

Fred Johnstone's poem A YOUNG AFRICAN REFUGEE IN IRELAND — UNPUBLISHED LETTER is particularly pertinent to this Irish reader, with those in Ireland that are coming to terms with the aftermath of immigration of both economic and political refugees. There are many here who believe that an example should be set by those who govern Ireland, but it appears that they won't engage with the subject in a meaningful way that will yield in the future. This idea is captured well in this poem, with the futility of the speaker's final outcome:

	When they came for me,
	They asked me in the police-car,
	My profession. I play drums, I said, truthfully.

Aging is the theme of Gill Nicholson's poem IMPRINT, which uses the image of two sets of footprints in the sand, reminiscent of the idea of the unseen help, to oppose a younger and older speaker in the poem, dealing with the aging parent and the swapping of roles. The beach imagery is well conjured, including the,

	treading soft sand,
	relishing the cruelty of pebbles

EVE REALISES HER PURPOSE THEN BECOMES CATHOLIC by Kathleen Kenny has some really sharp images moving the poem forward from creation myth, through the loss of innocence into the harshness of mundane life without Eden. It is, to be sure, a subject that poets return to again and again, that loss of Eden and whose fault the loss is, but here the simplicity of the lines,

 
	the big red hen of guilt,
	the small red cock of pleasure.

Altogether there are many poems gathered in Pennine Platform begging for prominence here, I have selected but a few. It is well worth subscribing to and has an appealing mix of UK voices and those from beyond, gathered by an editor with an agreeably discerning eye.

Editor Nicholas Bielby's atmospheric charcoal and pencil drawing of the Jamiyat Tabligh-Us-Islam Central Mosque caught under a lugubrious Bradford sky, perhaps a sunset, features on the cover of this publication produced with the assistance of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and the University of Bradford. The note to the illustration flags up the point; Britain's foremost textile town, situated in Yorkshire, is changing its cloth:

while new mosques are being built, churches are being closed

Exploring the ramifications of moral irony is very much what our literature is all about.

I have always been proud of the fact that the first small book of poems we published at Fighting Cock Press was Clare's DUNEGRASS.

	All heaven's days come measured out.
	Construct-a-kit
	Lets the Inventor set the sun
	Raise clod-head planets one by one,
	Odd things aligned: the bone, scope, tin,
	The brass fulfillment on the shelf,
	Scrap-mental treasure of himself,
	Outlasts the clay whom clay sucks in.

	Sheds are tethered
	by iron ropes to earth 
	and with sealed cottages
	crave shelter from trees cocked 
	like slanted hats. Gorse beckons
	over wind-eaten cliffs

	Gnaw-bone years slight the creek
	with their false runnels, a staggering flow
	bickering through the sluice, the earth
	shafted for auriferous clay while
	a generation is tilled and cropped.

	And all that time I at your side
	barrowing mullock, sifting 
	black silt through my cradle
	listening to the windlass prattle

	The park is a blue whale
	harpooned by winter.

	No-one comes. The gates
	are locked, swollen with ice.

	Dogs hold court
	around the litter bins:

	they sniff each other's arseholes
	and piss on the swings ...

All in all it's a characteristic Yorkshire thing and what the Pennine region Yorkshire is famous for; value for money, grit, honesty, good quality cloth.

Why not try one for size.

This is the first copy of Pennine Platform I've read and I must say I'm impressed. Although naturally some of the poems are less notable than others, on the whole this is a publication packed with well written, insightful poetry that engages the reader.

The issue starts with Jenny Dixon's JAIRUS' DAUGHTER, a meditative and thought provoking narrative from the point of view of Jairus' daughter who was brought back to life by Christ, encouraging the reader to ponder the consequences of that miracle. James' Deahl's HERE is also a poem rooted in a strong spirituality where:

	I stand watching migrating geese
	worship the air with their wings.

	Father has a great pair of webbed feet:
	all farmers need them to hoe in a river

	An image of this butterfly
	as a loose collection
	of books flickering
	through her brain,
	pages falling out
	of her ears

		The airport runways
	are the colour of dried blood and beneath our feet
	the imprint of creatures crushed millions of years ago.

		recognise behind the table
	yourself — the one who could unload the gun.

	Your lust for the lyrical never grows dimmer
	(for you've been reciting from cradle to zimmer)
	and what entertainment could really be finer
	than you reading rhymes from your garden recliner.

This issue of the magazine which has lived in the poetry world for over 30 years gives out 57 new poems. As would be expected, most poems are honed to reality issues and excitements of the imagination are few and far between. K.V.SKENE goes some of the way in THE OPPOSITE OF TRUTH:

	Hope is green in the early morning,
	patterned with the shadow-lace
	of trees 

	flying geese — useless
	as a politician's promise, dull
	as an unspent cent.

	You never married, yet speak volumes of love.
	Lexicons of tenderness, prayerful praise, lavished
	delicately like lapis lazuli or gold leaf

	It does no good to romanticize what was/
	always intended to be prosaic

	Yet slaves we've become to a 99 per cent shoeshine —
	the down-sized American Dream —

	Sad, I determine 
	London poses in ermine
	Full of gorged vermin