Dear Readers

Welcome to issue 4. We hope you find much to keep you, if not warm, then stimulated over the Christmas period. Once again, we have been humbled by the collaborative effort needed to produce this journal. Six reviewers sharing their literary opinions on six poetry collections, including new work by Ian Duhig, Claire Dyer, and Paul Stubbs; eight translators giving us eight translations of eight French poets including: Jacques Réda, Phillipe Jaccottet, Gilles Cyr; a topical essay on the work of Bob Dylan by Peter Robinson and a feature on the American poet Michalle Gould.

The 30 poets featuring in the main section have written beautifully nuanced and multi-layered poems in a range of styles and forms. Art features again (from da Vinci to Monet) and there is a welcome group of Welsh and West Country voices adding even more riches to these pages. Issue 4 is largely preoccupied with the past (the near and distant past), poems going back beyond Domesday to 325 BC, then 4004 BC then 8500 BC;  a sense of journey, journeying through  ‘past time’ and then back again, summed up in these lines:

a kind of recalling
that keeps on hauling us back to this world
– (Esther Morgan)

The High Window has made connectiions with other magazines and journals in a spirit of friendship and reciprocity, with the aim of sharing news about poetry with an international outlook. Details can be found on the ‘Friends’ page of the menu bar.

The winter publication from The High Window Press is Dust by Bethany Pope. If you want to buy Bethany’s book and view our exciting list of forthcoming titles for 2017 please go the ‘Press’ page

We are also introducing a new feature relating to art. We are very pleased to introduce Angela Smyth  as ‘Resident Artist’ at The High Window for 2017. Angela has an international reputation for her work across a range of media, but  specialises in fine art and illustration. In 2017 Angela will aim to respond visually to some of the poems she reads in each issue of the journal. You can find out more about Angela by clicking on ‘Resident Artist’ and by visiting her website: http://www.angelasmythart.co.uk/