Ever wondered, ‘Who is The Reader?’ Issue 5 drops some clues by consolidating still further the core identity of the magazine despite its ever-changing appearance. As Jane Davis explains in her editorial, The Reader is your companion through the uncertain pioneer country contained in books “with a little knowledge of the terrain, who can point out things you hadn’t noticed, and perhaps, the direction you want to go.”
For Graham Swift, a story begins with the recognition of the strangeness of life:
‘Storytelling…is a way we have of dealing with those sometimes distressing questions, “What happened to us?”, “What became of us?”, “How did we get to this?”A.S Byatt talks about her personal processes of writing, and the reading that brings her through:
‘To write a book changes one a great deal: it changes what one sees, it changes one in little ways… as you go about the streets everything is interesting…’Richard Hill is asked ‘Can we teach the writing of poetry?’:
‘We can learn from the words of other writers as well as from our own experience how to tell the truth about what we see.’
ALSO: Poetry from Stanley Middleton and Ruth Padel, reviews of God’s Funeral by A.N.Wilson and new collections by Elizabeth Jennings and Michael Symmons Roberts, and there are some suggestions of reading material for teenage boys.
Features
Graham Swift – Something Strange
Brian Nellist – Voices in Time
Ruth Padel – Poem
David Gerard – interviews A.S. Byatt
B.Z. Niditch – Poem
Stanley Middleton – Two Poems
Janet Modina – Genesis
Janet Cunliffe-Jones – Poem
Shelley Bridson – Poem
Dan Jacobson – Poem
Pamela Bond – Poems
Tim Kershaw – What will teenage boys read?
Mary Dagley – Poem
Regulars
Reader Reviews
The Reader Recommends: Second Hand
Richard Hill – Can we teach the writing of poetry?
Simon Starkey – reads Paradise Lost
Literary Problems? – Ask The Reader
Contributors
Buck’s Quiz