IN PRAISE OF HOAXERS

Literary hoaxing is a fine British tradition - just think of Chatterton and Ossian. But the finest recent example is Aus-tralian: the fake Modernist poet Ern Malley who stunned the editor of the magazine Angry Penguins with his 16-poem collection The Darkening Ecliptic. The new issue of Poetry Review celebrates the Malley affair along with the lesser-known tale of Gwen Harwood, who, under the guise of "Walter Lehrmann", got her own back on the Australian journal Bulletin by submitting a poem which contained the acrostic "So long Bulletin. Fuck all editors." Did the PR team scan with anxious eyes the poetic contributions from the likes of Glyn Maxwell, Jenny Joseph, Ruth Padel and (above) Fred D'Aguiar?

Other features include Mark Doty talking to Carole Satyamurti, Hermione Lee (top) on the Heaney-Hughes anthology The School Bag, Adam Thorpe on Pessoa and Ruth Padel on The Odyssey.

! Poetry Review Summer 1997, pounds 5.95