From the Archives - Sandwiches 19

The archives include a big wedge of old poetry magazines that I simply can't bear to throw away, many of them from the late 70's when the 60's 'underground' was merging rather incongruously into the punk era.

One of my favourites was Sandwiches, and its number 19, dated July 1977, which was the last edited by Paul Lamprill. I found this one specifically because one poem from it has lived with me for the 34 years since. They Batter and Batter Me: A Modern Aura by Effie Mihopolous (it says here) is beautiful, short and proves that poetry can be at its best and most memorable when not necessarily fully understood but resounding with possibilities. The poem isn't as long as its title and seems to me better than William Carlos Williams' poems about, respectively, a red wheelbarrow or some plums he found in the fridge.

One of my poems in this issue was Tree, in the version before its lines were re-arranged into the shape of a tree, but it shows the influence of McGough on some of my earliest published work although its slanted lines here are due to my scanning now, which I decided to keep for presentational reasons, rather than any contemporary artistic motive, or having to scan it again.

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But, then again, you can never be too sure. You can quote a story about Fulke Greville one day and find out that a book published about him in the 1970's shed disparaging light on it when you read it the following week.

It's the same with Effie Mihopolous. I was quite prepared to believe it was a nom de plume or the invention of one of the many poets publishing in those magazines at the time. But I'm thrilled to find she was real, and yet saddened at the same time, to find she departed us quite so recently http://journaltips.blogspot.com/2010/01/remembering-effie-mihopoulos.html

Suddenly, although I could hardly believe she existed in the first place, I'm now feeling as if I'd lost a friend.

The least I can do is look her up and find out if she published any books.

Don't ever look up old names. It can only bring heartache