Tom Pickard recalls his youth as a poet hemmed in by 1960s bureaucracy and Carol Rumens discusses Tony Harrison. Gerard Houghton introduces the art of Gerald Wilde. 'The Girt Pike' by Louis de Bernières. Fiction by Christian Page, Jacques Sternberg, & Anita Jackson. Poetry by Ben Okri, John Greening, & Les Murray.

FICTION
Louis de Bernières, 'The Girt Pike'
Christian Page, 'The Freebie'
Jacques Sternberg (translated by Iain White), 'The Other Side'
Anita Jackson, 'Pastor Forbes'

POETRY
Matthew Sweeney, 'Zero Hour'
Tin Ujević (translated by Richard Burns and Daša Marić), 'Blessed morning, you cascade'
Jeremy Worman, 'Lanterns'
Anthony Thwaite, 'St. Mary's, Wimbledon'
Stella Davis, 'Coffee in Weimar'
Alexis Lykiard, 'Survival of the Fascist'
Peter Abbs, 'It Returns'
Ben Okri, 'The Ruin and the Forest'
John Greening, 'Seven Sins'
Les Murray, 'Post Mortem'
A.D. Harvey, 'Bella'
Peter Abbs, 'The Day of the Paraclete'
Robert Nye, 'Cockle-shells at Pagglesham'

FEATURES
Gerard Houghton on the art of Gerard Wilde
Carol Rumens, 'How to be an English Poet'
Tom Pickard, 'A Work Conchy'

REVIEWS
John Greening on Poetry Now
Leonie Rushforth on Moniza Alvi and Ruth Padel
Jeremy Worman on Bill Broady
Michael Redman on Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk
John Whitworth on Billy Collins
Colin Thompson on Miguel de Cervantes

Cover: sculptures by Paul Bothwell Kincaid (b.1942), 'The Teraphim of Trash' & 'The Sleeping Lord'

Peter Abbs . His Selected Poems appeared in February from halfacrown publishers.
Louis de Bernières. Among his works are The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán, and Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
Stella Davis. Her first collection of poetry Watershot was published by Wanda in 2001.
John Greening has published nine collections of poetry and received an award from the Society of Authors. He reviews for Poetry Review and The Times Literary Supplement.
A.D.Harvey. Warriors of the Rainbow (Bloomsbury, 2000); Arnhem (Cassell, 2001).
Anita Jackson has published stories in Stand and Midstream.
Alexis Lykiard's recent work includes poetry, Skeleton Keys (Redbeck, 2002); translation, Heliogabalus (Artaud, Creation, 2003); and prose, Jean Rhys Revisited (Stride 2000).
Les Murray lives in Bunyah in New South Wales. Carcanet published The Paperbark Tree: Selected Prose in 1992. His poems have been published worldwide.
Robert Nye is a poet who also writes novels. He published his first poems at 16 in The London Magazine. For 20 years he was the poetry critic of The Times. He reviews fiction for The Guardian.
Ben Okri is a Booker Prize winner and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Christian Page is a Londoner living in Japan with his Japanese wife and three children. He works in a language school. He is looking for a publisher for his first novel Weed.
Tom Pickard. Born in Newcastle in 1946. New and selected poems Hole in the Wall (Flood Editions, Chicago, 2002). Anthologist of oral history. Prize-winning director of television documentaries.
Michael Redman is a research student at Cambridge.
Carol Rumens' most recent collection of poems is Holding Pattern (Blackstaff, 1998).
Leonie Rushforth was an editor of the literary magazine Bananas and has published poems, reviews, and essays in various outlets.
Jacques Sternberg is a French novelist, short story and script writer. He wrote the script for Alain Resnais' film Je t'aime, je t'aime.
Matthew Sweeney was Writer in Residence at the South Bank Arts Centre on the River Thames. His Selected Poems (Cape, 2002) is reviewed in this issue.
The Reverend Doctor Colin Thompson is a Fellow and Tutor in Spanish at St Catherine's College, Oxford, specializing in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Anthony Thwaite first contributed a poem to The London Magazine in 1954. His fourteen books of poems include Selected Poems 1956-1996 (Enitharmon, 2001).
Tin Ujević (1891-1955). Croatian poet and bohemian. The poem translated in this issue is from The Necklace (1926). Silver coin minted in honour of the centenary of his birth.
John Whitworth's eighth book of poems is The Whitworth Gun (Peterloo, 2002). He writes the poetry section in Writers' & Artists' Yearbook (A & C Black, 2002).
Gerald Wilde (1905-1986). The October Gallery in Old Gloucester Street in London maintains an extensive archive of his work, which is being transferred to Tate Britain.
Jeremy Worman's poetry and prose have been published in magazines and anthologies. He reviews for The Observer, The New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement.