I’ve just received my copy of Tears in the Fence 47, which I think is one of the strongest issues yet. Of course I would say that, as I’m Associate Editor. I’m particularly glad to see strong new work by younger British poets such as Chris McCabe, James Wilkes, Hannah Silva, Simon Turner and Joe Dunthorne.
There are reviews of Todd Swift’s Winter Tennis, David Caddy’s Man in Black and lots, lots more. In my regular column, From The Other Side Of The Fence, I discuss the difficulties of creating a career in poetry, and ask ‘if you were to get a tattoo of a poet on your back, which poet would it be and why?‘
There’s also an updated typeface and this issue comes in a rather fetching cover – see above for comparisons with various mustards.
Tom Chivers 
I would assemble a bank of images containing the online portrait of every poet in visual representation.
I would then apply to the arts councils and various patrons of the Global Art Artist/s collective of bluffers, duffers and dope-fiends finkin thaze is gonna top wotzer-maimed wobbie wumble deh bum de dum bum-nut broomhandle stirring the tolerance and transparency mechanism in the mermen of this specific state of mind wo/men and merladzies knoo de pooh-a-tray, dabblin’ scangers scammin’ and asking for support, in me bestest voyze loik, ‘n er…yeah, super lingo slicer, we need to promote ourself better, adverts for pooh-a-tray getz, rival bores sniffing at the slice/s weeze bin promised T larh, verse it out….a ha, so yeah tom, i then get a large multi-annual grant to run the amazingly ambitious dream of Art Creation Bummers wuntin only to serve as a soldier and cultural vessel of the infinite accumulation of memories time accumulated into the concentrated point of our breathing now tom…
next year then, if successful, i will oversee the 90 by 90 meter photographic quality computer generated image. The programme i will run means that a huge visual composite of all the poet-portraits we feed through Firefox imaging software, can be accessed, and we can further split the images within the composite into various groups, according to whatever variable we wish.
For example, all the living ones and dead poets, those born before and after 1978, will be stripped back to a basic patina, upon the surface of which a selected group of poets the general-expert-consensus’ will decide/s and i instigate into my practice as cultural agitating operative in the SE Bloomsbury Art collective of democratic despots, making it up as we bore into our straightest of selves, assembled into the poster, advert for the nua Neil Dawn sir tossoar, and give us the sean nos, show me the feckin filfie foe fookin doing and boo, giv uz de feckin moaney vibe, SWP, south-west pooh-a-tray, lankie streak of owt doin’ listen to the public mooer, let it be, imagine only a placeless heaven of “stoney grey hills”, weak light, transplanted mind/s, he Author no longer alone, but with a mate and so s/he is now, poetic existential cash converting cow, tune owt, yeah, just sharpening witz..
Change that Tom. i have beatific plan for all humankind, and wish to invite you in your capacity as a very important agitator and conduit through which Larhnden is yer own fella, worra boot hoo-kin’ up and fookin off deh foe, get a few chapettes wound oop coz weeze deh filfee foe fie fookin up der plain plan s/he can but only piss ooer-selves larfin at, when yerz a simple hungry poo-arght aftoar boo-ker kercha cha baa baa wick shee wuz irenny goo-der mein her furnace seething wiv luurve yer loikin plazzie approximation of summat less clazzie, furgoff me lerd i am a blert and lonely i do be, when we as one liberal-cosciousness of free hate and envy…erm, no, no…i mean love and peace, doing our utmost to conserve, using minimal energy and leaving only footprints in sand the solar traipsing tide/s erase, silently binary floundered staes turning lives of our great, great, great, great, great, great, nieces and nephews, into an unacceptable unpleasantness, the source of which is the research-pool of mystic practice and the “rhyming and timing” (“godfather of irish slam poetry – marty mulligan from Mulingar)