From The Foundation 'LYRIK KABINETT', Germany
With sincere dismay and stunned lack of comprehension we have come to know that Arc Publications are about to lose their Arts Council England funding – it seems incredible to us that the Art Council should not be able to see the inestimable value in the work of this publisher. This wrong decision to cut the funding cannot but cause grievous damage to the English reading public and to lovers of poetry not only in the UK but in the whole English-speaking world.
So we too write from abroad, from Germany. Here in Munich the Foundation Lyrik Kabinett (Poetry Cabinet) maintains a public library, comprising about 45.000 works of poetry from all over the world. After the London Poetry Library we are the second greatest such collection in Europe. We collect poetry from all periods since the Gilgamesh Epic and the Vedas, in many European (and also some Asiatic) languages as well as artists’ books. You can find some further information about our foundation on our website (unfortunately up to now only in German).
In addition we regularly organize readings of international poetry. Among our guests have been many of the most renowned poets of our time. For the interest of this letter we just name a selection of poets who all have been our guests or (being deceased) have been presented in readings of their poetry: Eugenijus Alisanka, Anise Koltz, Viola Fischerová, Petr Borkovec, John Kinsella, Mila Haugová, Glyn Maxwell, Tomasz Salamun, Pavel Kolmacka, Ewa Lipska, Ludwig Steinherr, Tadeusz Rózewicz etc. You will have noticed that these are all poets who feature among the writers of Arc Publications. These are all significant poets selected from the list of our more 800 readings over recent years.
We think that Arc Publications offers one of the richest and most courageous programmes of lyrical poetry in the UK. We buy Arc-Books whenever our budget affords it, we read and appreciate them – and we know that the users of our library love them. We especially admire the (as we think) infallible intuition with which Tony Ward and Angela Jarman find and select international poets to be translated into English. Due to this impressive initiative that English readers today are able to come to know and to enjoy many of the most important and exciting voices of international contemporary poetry. And without initiatives like these, the readers in the UK can soon be cut off from the international currents in this central part of literature.
We sincerely hope that the Arts Council can be brought to revise its decision! Or that some other way of funding can be found for Arc Publications. For to our eyes they truly are an Arc – that is, a Rainbow in the sky and heaven of English publishing. It marks a covenant between the ‘mother tongue of mankind’ – as our philosophers Hamann and Herder have termed lyrical poetry – and English readers. We would think it an immense and fatal loss for the English reading public, if Arc Publications were not to continue their work! But we sincerely hope that this still can be averted.
We wish Arc Publications all the best wishes that thankful readers can send across the Channel: We wish them strength to defend their invaluable work and encourage them to fight for their continuation! For already now we keenly look forward to new books from them – and we hope there will be many of these beautiful, intellectually rich volumes to come!