Introducing St Botolph's Review No. 2
Ann Skea
EDITORS: David Andrews Ross and Daniel Weissbort
PUBLISHER: Viper Press ( May 2006)
ISBN:0 9552925 0 6 PRICE: US$18.00 or £10 (p & p included) 34 pages
SEND CHEQUES ONLY with postal address to Viper Press, 3 Powys Gardens, London,
NW11 8HH, UK
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'Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes': these linked names, like 'Cathy and Heathcliff'
now resonate with a whole romantic, tragic story, but this story began just
fifty years ago when a new literary magazine, the Saint Botolph's Review, was
launched.
In 1956, like all those involved with the Review, Sylvia and Ted were young,
unknown Cambridge undergraduates. Sylvia, at 24, was an American Fulbright
Scholar who had been up at Cambridge for just a few months. Ted, at 26, was
(as he wrote in Birthday Letters) "sitting youth away" in a temporary office
job in London and "recidived / Into Alma Mater" at weekends to be with his
friends.
Ted and his friends shared a love of poetry and song. They met regularly at a
local Cambridge pub to talk, drink and sing old folk-songs. They also
sometimes met in the garden of the Saint Botolph's rectory, where one of them,
Lucas Myers, had lodgings in a converted chicken shed. Their decision to
create and publish a new magazine was a youthful, but serious, challenge to
the accepted literary fashions of the time, and on February 25th, 1956, at a
memorable party, Saint Botolph's Review was launched and Ted and Sylvia met
for the first time.
Both Sylvia and Ted wrote (not entirely accurately) about this party and so it
has become the stuff of legend. But the Review languished, those who wrote it,
produced it and launched it went on with their lives, and only a few copies
survived for scholars and collectors eventually to haggle over.
Now, fifty years later, the Saint Botolph's Review No.2 has appeared. It was
always intended that the Review would be "published occasionally", but this
second occasion has been so long in coming that David Andrews Ross, who
remains the editor, writes that "many of the people who attended the enormous
party to launch the first issue ... must now be dead". He mentions Joe Lyde,
whose band (with Joe on trumpet) provided the music; Ted whose poetry was
included in the first Review; and Sylvia, who danced with Lucas Myers (another
early contributor, but still very much alive) and who, in a romantic encounter
with Ted that night, lost her hairband and bit Ted so hard on the cheek that
he wore the "ring-moat of tooth-marks" for the next month.
Daniel Weissbort, who was dragged, groggy with a bad cold, to play the piano
in Joe's band at that memorable party, has worked with David Ross to edit and
produce this second issue. Lucas Myers, Daniel Huws, Than Minton, George
Weissbort, all of whom contributed to the first issue, have provided new
material. And others, who at various times over the years have shared their
interests are included.
Inevitably Sylvia and Ted are remembered: especially in an essay by Lucas
Myers, who was a lifelong friend of Ted's - "one / Among those three of four
who stay unchanged / Like a separate self" (as Ted wrote in 'Visit' in
Birthday Letters). Myers records his own memories of the couple and he writes
of Sylvia's "varied voices" in her letters and journals and of the distorted
view these sometimes gave people of Ted's character.
Ted's own previously unpublished introduction to poems by Susan Alliston
attests his essential generosity of spirit. Sue was a neighbour of his at 18
Rugby Street in London and she is memorialized in the Birthday Letters poem of
that title. She is the woman in the poem who, three years after Sylvia's
death, was pacing the floor, "dying of leukaemia" (actually, of Hodgkin's
disease). Daniel Weissbort and Olwyn Hughes found Sue's poems in her flat
after her death and when Daniel suggested publishing them Ted wrote this
introduction. Shortly after this, Daniel and David Ross set up the Viper Press
"planning to publish a few books" but the project never went ahead. Only now,
"a few decades later", have they revived the Viper Press because, as David
Ross says, they want to celebrate "pieces of good writing, poetry and prose,
which we think worth reading".
In 1956, the contents list of the first issue of Saint Botolph's Review read
as follows:
POEMS by:
DAVID ROSS
E. LUCAS MYERS
DANIEL HUWS
DANIEL WEISSBORT
TED HUGHES
An Impression in Hospital,
THAN MINTON
Aunt Palestine's Girl,
E. LUCAS MYERS
Letter from a Painter,
GEORGE WEISSBORT
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Now, in 2006, the contents of Saint Botolph's Review No.2 are:
Editorial
Lucas Myers: The Voices of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes: Susan Alliston: An Introduction
Susan Alliston: Poems
David Ross: The People Plague
Daniel Huws: Poems
Nathaniel Minton: Possibilities for the resolution of Tribal Warfare
Les Murray: Poem
Daniel Weissbort: From Life and Songs
Kathy Duggan: Poem
George Weissbort: The Neglected Art of Looking at Art
Tom Hoogewerf: Poems
Lenrie Peters: A United Africa?
Ann Skea: Poems
Posy Simmonds Drawing
Biographical Notes
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Only 200 copies of Saint Botolph's Review No.2 have been printed.
A third edition may be available in 2056 - or perhaps a little earlier.
Ann Skea
Website and Ted Hughes pages: http://ann.skea.com/