Dear Readers

Welcome to the autumn edition of The High Window. Issue 7 has been  an honour and a delight to compile. We are very grateful to Andrew Houwen for curating the Japanese poetry in our translation section, to (Janet) Jackson for writing a fascinating and original essay on the influence of Daoism on the work of two Australian poets and to Kate Debolt for featuring as American Poet. We have a plethora of books and chapbooks, (including work by Michael Lee Rattigan, Claire Booker, Philip Fried) reviewed by a team of expert reviewers and more unique and delightful artwork from Angela Smyth. Thank you to all our reviewers and translators and poets for making this issue possible.

Many of the poems are inspired by, or in memory of, other writers and artists (Stanley Spencer, Cesare Pavese, Italo Calvino, John Clare, Seamus Heaney), but the subject matter is marvellously varied in this issue, from birdsong to museums to hanging out with language, a variety of poems that bring to mind a line or two from Sheenagh Pugh’s ‘The Healing’- ‘too much world can over-excite / the senses.’

Our publication from The High Window Press this quarter is a selected poems,  End Phrase, by the internationally acclaimed poet Mario Susko.

If you are interested in buying Mario’s book, or any of the seven books from our backlist, please click on the Press icon on our masthead. We are unfunded and volunteers, so any income from sales will help us to continue with The High Window.

Finally, we have decided that the twelve weeks between each of our quarterly issues is really too long a hiatus. We have, therefore, inaugurated a programme of weekly previews and supplementary posts, which have already generated considerable interest.

Happy Autumn

The editors