The Dark Horse

[romac]

I don’t know whether anyone reads The Dark Horse poetry magazine. Its website is here (http://www.star.ac.uk/darkhorse/editorial.html).
I haven’t come across it before but plan to order an issue on the strength of the website.
The magazine contains poems, essays, and a few reviews. What’s interesting about it is that it tries to provide an outlet for and an exchange between British (mainly Scottish, I think) and North American poetry.
As its UK editor, Gerry Cambridge, says in an online editorial:

The Horse was conceived in the autumn of 1994. Dana Gioia offered to be a conduit for work from the U.S, provided the journal was of more than 'local interest'. I readily agreed. The Horse would not have continued for long without American involvement. The latter helps lift the publication's concerns clear of uncritical allegiance to what can be the claustrophobic - if spirited and carnaptious - Scottish scene. Similarly, the Horse's Scottish base means it can take a cool look at the factionalism of U.S. poetry.

It concentrates more on metrical poetry, but says it will print anything of good quality.

The website’s back issues contain interviews with Douglas Dunn, Anne Stevenson, Philip Hobsbaum, and Edwin Morgan. I noticed that the latest issue contains a new essay by Seamus Heaney on Hugh Macdiarmid – sadly this isn’t on the website, although it gives me one reason to buy it.

[Dunc]

Thanks for that.

I was browsing around on the site but the more I read, the more I kept thinking, What's Scottish about this?

McLuhan was right, damn him. We're all homogenized. Regards / Dunc

[romac]

Originally posted by Dunc McReil
Thanks for that.

I was browsing around on the site but the more I read, the more I kept thinking, What's Scottish about this?

McLuhan was right, damn him. We're all homogenized. Regards / Dunc


Some of the poets discussed and featured in the magazine are Scottish, and therein lies its “Scottishness”.

However, your question is a good one, and bears on one of the dilemmas that all minority cultures have to come to terms with.
Should a minority culture’s literature take to do with themes, images, and issues that stem specifically from within its own cultural milieu, and thereby risk charges of parochialism?
Or should it attempt to tackle broader themes unrelated to its country and culture of origin, and thereby risk charges of homogeneity?
Or, on the other hand, will cross-fertilisation, such as a magazine like this promotes, create poetry and criticism that is imaginative and invigorating because each culture can look at the other with freshly critical eyes?

[Dunc]

I think a poet from Scotland who sounds natural with some outward aspect of nationality like words found only in Scottish could write altogether acceptable poetry in the style.

But plainly a lot of poets from Scotland want to write in a more international voice than that. And that's how they should write.

After all, I don't have to say bloke, dinkum or ratbag in a poem unless I want to. Regards / Dunc

[romac]

Heh.
And there’s always Tom Leonard’s satire:

The Voyeur

what’s your favourite word dearie
is it wee
I hope it’s wee
wee’s such a nice wee word
like a wee hairy dog
with two wee eyes
such a nice wee word to play with dearie
you can say it quickly
with a wee smile
and a wee glance to the side
or you can say it slowly dearie
with your mouth a wee bit open
and a wee sigh dearie
a wee sigh
put your wee head on my shoulder dearie
oh my
a great wee word
and Scottish
it makes you proud.

Tom Leonard