Abstract

I am getting near the end of my tenure as editor, just as aspirant contributors are getting to know me and can address me by name. I still get poems coming in for John Ennis, or Michael O'Siadhail, or Dennis O'Driscoll, or other past editors - all of it a salutary reminder that I am only transient here, and that Poetry Ireland Review outlives any one editorship. Presumably the editor of PIR47 or whatever will be getting manuscripts with accompanying notes to Peter Denman, or Peter Denim, or Peter Desmond, or Peter Drennan. In all of which I at any rate, would recognise myself. If I may be permitted a little egocentricity, Why do so many people get the simple but distinctive two-syllable six-letter name wrong? Its not that I feel that I'm particularly notable, as in individual, or that an editors's name should be writ in stone, but I'm talking about writers of poetry here, and their medium is words; I'd have thought "Den" and "man" would pose no great challenge to anyone past the first stage of the Ladybird reading scheme - never mind poets.