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Letters to Randall Swingler
by Andy Croft
(Shoestring Press, £10)
THE OTTAVA rima is a rhyming stanza used in the past by poets such as Sir Thomas Wyatt, Lord Byron and WB Yeats and, fittingly, it's been chosen by prolific poet, editor and publisher Andy Croft for his latest poetry collection Letters to Randall Swingler.
A brilliant exercise in political discourse, wit and irony, it's a book written out of Croft’s profound desire to establish a poetic dialogue with Swingler (1900-1967), the largely forgotten novelist, poet, playwright, librettist and editor of radical literary magazines such as Left Review, Poetry and People, Our Time, Arena and Circus.
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