Poetry and the Masses

[Leanne]

I'm with milo (not on the Dead Poets Society thing, I may punch him for that...) in that my favourite contemporary poets tend to be ones I've dealt with personally (which doesn't mean that I only like my friends, because I can tell you that some of my best friends write rotten poetry, and some of the people I've dealt with personally who happen to be brilliant poets still make me want to run over them in the street).

There is of course the incomporable Ms Mercedes Webb-Pullman, New Zealand's finest. Also Stephan Anstey from Lowell, Mass. -- a town that seems to produce well above its fair share of not-too-terrible poets. Then there's Jim Benz from Minneapolis, the delightful Canadian Ruth Day Elliott who seems to have been stuck in Chicago for a long time now, my fellow Aussie John Holland, Scotland's Gary Brown, Steve Meador from Florida, a terribly grumpy Irishman called Peter Dunne who now pollutes the streets of London... all of whom I would highly recommend reading, but not necessarily talking to

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And a few of the critters in the Pig Pen, who know who they are and why I'm not singling them out for special attention, but I will read and have read with great pleasure any publication they care to produce.