From NIALL MUNRO Associate Lecturer and Weekly Poem Editor,
I am very disappointed and surprised to hear that Arc's Arts Council funding has not been renewed.
As the Editor of the Weekly Poem service at Oxford Brookes University's Poetry Centre (an initiative through which I send a poem to our subscribers each Monday drawn from a select group of publishers), I can speak not only for the high quality and tremendous variety of Arc's list, but also the very positive reception of that list amongst many readers.
I frequently receive feedback from our subscribers commending not just the Arc poems which I use, but also Arc's ongoing approach to the publication of work in translation. Notwithstanding the excellent English language work by writers like Jill Bialosky, Linda France, and Michael Hulse, these readers and I greatly value the fact that Arc is one of the very few publishers to present translated work in bilingual editions, for at a time when fewer and fewer students are learning languages other than English, such illuminating texts can inspire healthy curiosity about other cultures, and even encourage them to take up one of those languages. But poems by writers such as Mourid Barghouti, François Jacqmin, and Keki N. Daruwalla are not just important as representative examples from Palestine, France, and India, but are internationally important figures, whose writing has inspired readers and influenced the work of many poets across the globe. If we reduce access to works by such authors, we impoverish ourselves.
Arc's policy of selecting important work from abroad and matching it with fine translations strikes out against the increasing insularity of our country, and deserves all our support.