Molly Bloom eight
Photo of Lee Harwood
by Bernard Bardinet
by Bernard Bardinet
In memory of Lee Harwood
June 6, 1939 - July 26, 2015
Lee Harwood was not just in the first Molly Bloom magazine, he was its centre-piece. Literally so, as his 'Poem For Writers' ran across the centre spread, the pages turned on their side to accommodate the long lines. It was, in a sense, a statement both by me as editor and by Lee as contributor. Re-reading it now, 38 years on, I can see why Lee had been unhappy three years earlier with my review of his delightful book/pamphlet Old Bosham Bird Watch (Pig Press 1977) in Perfect Bound, the magazine I co-edited with Peter Robinson and which was the forerunner of Molly Bloom. I hope and believe that he came eventually to understand my words as an honest attempt to engage seriously with some of the difficulties - as well as the felicities - in writing I held in high esteem (and still do). It was Lee's very directness and honesty, I thought and still think, that lay at the heart of both the happy and awkward aspects. If he disliked my tone, finding it perhaps unacceptably clever-dick, my defence now is that I was an undergraduate trying hard to appear not to be out of my depth. It's an attempted deception that can be a lifelong habit. Not, though, I think, for Lee. Others who knew him better - some of whom have contributed heart-felt tributes to this memorial issue - may have glimpsed energetic paddling below the surface; I, in the poems and on the few occasions when I met him, saw only the serenely gliding swan.
Lee's dislike of my review had a happy outcome for me, occasioning my first contact with the book's publisher, Ric Caddel. Ric had the wit a few years later, as I recall it, to put Lee and me on together in his Colpitts Poetry reading series in Durham. Lee himself clearly bore no grudge, as evidenced by his excellent contribution to the very first issue of Molly Bloom in 1980, and he kindly gave permission for those two poems to appear again in the magazine's online launch. You can find them again via the tribute page in this edition.
With Lee Harwood's death we have lost an important poet, a gentleman and a gentle man. A man who unfailingly showed, as our mutual friend the poet Tony Baker put it to me, a lovely chosen vulnerability.
Aidan Semmens, editor, September 2015
In this issue:
Lee Harwood tributes by
- Alasdair Paterson
- Alan Baker
- Clive Bush
- Maria Jastrzębska
- Frances Presley
- Michaela Ridgway
- Peter Robinson
- Janet Sutherland
Other poetry by
November Stop Press: anyone who enjoys Molly Bloom will also be interested in
A Festschrift for Tony Frazer, a companion website built by the editor of this one, celebrating a phenomenal poetry publishing career and a list that includes the names of many poets whose work has appeared here.
A Festschrift for Tony Frazer, a companion website built by the editor of this one, celebrating a phenomenal poetry publishing career and a list that includes the names of many poets whose work has appeared here.
