3 December 2020 James Laughlin There are numerous cases of that, where one of our writers discovers another writer whom he likes, and we then take that book on. So it’s a very close relationship. We can do that because we’re so small.
3 December 2020 James Laughlin Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they’re just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.
3 December 2020 James Laughlin Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they’re more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven’t the least idea of where poetry is going.
3 December 2020 James Laughlin We don’t attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry.
3 December 2020 James Laughlin I think that concrete poetry seems to have, as far as I can see, come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn’t seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago.
3 December 2020 James Laughlin I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don’t say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.
3 December 2020 James Laughlin I think there’s no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.
