From SAMPURNA CHATTARJI, poet, Mumbai, India
I am writing to you from Mumbai, India. I got to know about the proposed withdrawal of funding for Arc from my friend Alexandra Buchler (who in fact gave me a copy of Six Czech Poets, published by you), and after visiting your website, I felt I should write to you. As a poet who has just had her second poetry collection published by a small independent press in Mumbai, Poetrywala (and this after having had my first book published by its opposite - the Indian Academy of Letters), I can empathize with what you and your authors must be going through now. In India, we don't have an Arts Council, so my friends and I have always been happy for our friends in England who had at least this source of funds for a genre that is otherwise so ignored. In fact I see that Arc has published Keki Daruwalla's work - and Keki is the one who wrote the Foreword to my first collection, 'Sight May Strike You Blind'! The community of poets is such a strong, rich, interconnected and rewarding one, and so it makes me very sad that support to this community should be withdrawn.