NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Moonset: The Newspaper is an expanded format short-form journal with enormous heart: essentially, it aims to be nothing less than a biannual compendium of features, roundups, author insights and myriad poems, both illustrated and in column form, with many benefiting from extended editorial commentary. The initial issue in this format (tabloid style, forty pages, stylishly printed and a pleasure to read) almost succeeds in fulfilling these huge ambitions.

Though a journal with better than three hundred poems can never ensure absolute quality page by page — indeed, editor an'ya explicitly emphasises her eclecticism — and there is some uneven work, Moonset contains numerous excellent short form poems. In particular the magazine showcases the work of poets such as Margarita Engle, M Kei and Beverley George, as well as extensive selections from Serbian, Croatian and Japanese poets. There is room for haiku/senryu, haibun, haiga, tanka, huge amounts of artwork and incisive features such as poets' own picks of their signature work, a how-to bookbinding article and lengthy news updates. The result is a delightful mix of art, article and achievement, with commitment to the short form and its associated artistic endeavours shining through.

It is a rare journal which can encompass work as diverse as this, moving from the brief gestures of freeform poetics to unreconstructed syllabics through a shifting middle ground:

	grinding
	a handful of coffee beans
	I enjoy
	this time of not chasing
	this time of not being chased

	Hakozaki Reiko

		with every blackbird
		the sun, too, settles deeper
		into the cold trees

		Jeffrey Woodward

	another tanka
	written in my journal
	this Thanksgiving
	on the back of my hands
	the bulge of veins

	Lenard D Moore

Moonset is very obviously an expression of commitment to, and by, a short form community. Its tone is pleasant but never flippant, and allows with each potted biography placed next to the work a unique sense of the integration of life and work. My only complaint is that in certain cases — for instance Hortensia Anderson's rather self-indulgent biography on page 25 — we lack a little editorial sternness: where pruning is needed (usually not of the work), this lively sense of community can sometimes intrude.

This aside, volume three number one, the first of the newspaper format, is a triumph of passion and innovation. Long may it last.