"The collection begins in 1969 with Anne Ridler, who steps from Eliot’s shadow – as well as an accomplished poet, she was an editor at Faber – to assert her early influence over Schmidt, particularly in exhorting him to eschew a group name for his circle of poets and critics – and certainly not to use the proposed name of “Vividists.” The book ends in 2018 with medical doctor cum poet and essayist Iain Bamforth, whose affecting letter ranges from the death of a loved one to linguistic theory to Gadamer to his own poetry to Rilke and Rodin. In one letter, Bamforth embodies the best of what Carcanet and PN Review have become: a survey of the most intelligent, literate and creative thinking about poetry in Britain and the world. What Schmidt says of Bamforth should be said of himself, as editor and publisher: “There is nothing old-fashioned about him, but there is a broad living culture still informing everything he says and does.”" Kevin Gardner Wild Court

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