From RICHARD GWYN, poet and translator
I am writing to express my dismay and outrage at the curtailing of Arts Council Support for Arc Publications. Over the past three decades Arc has established an extraordinary record of publishing fine poets. Arc’s translations have introduced an entire generation of readers to work from poets in other languages that otherwise would never have been accessible to English language readers.
Poetry is not a luxury: it represents the essential spoken voice of a culture, speaks for the dispossessed when they would otherwise have no voice, and opens the minds of our children to possibilities they would otherwise never encounter. Please reconsider the short-sighted and dangerous decision to withdraw funding from Arc.