About Between The Lines

"Essential reading for admirers of these poets ... [V]igorous, illuminating and sometimes surprising adjuncts to the work itself." – Neil Corcoran "[These] books enrich our contextual understanding of contemporary poetry ..." – Patrick Crotty, Times Literary Supplement "The whole series is a remarkably fine enterprise." – Dana Gioia

Background Between The Lines was founded in 1998 and publishes unusually wide-ranging and unusually deep-going interviews with some of today’s most accomplished poets.     Some would deny that any useful purpose is served by putting to a writer questions which are not answered by his or her books. For them, what Yeats called ‘the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast’ is best left alone, not asked to interrupt its cornflakes, or to set aside its morning paper, while someone with a tape recorder inquires about its life, habits and attitudes.     If BTL does not not share this view, it is not because we endorse Sainte-Beuve’s dictum, tel arbre, tel fruit – as the tree, so the fruit – but because we understand what Geoffrey Braithwaite was getting at when the author of Flaubert’s Parrot had him say: "But if you love a writer, if you depend upon the drip-feed of his intelligence, if you want to pursue him and find him – despite edicts to the contrary – then it’s impossible to know too much."     BTL's first thirteen volumes were each devoted to a single poet, the youngest of whom was born in 1938. Its fourteenth volume represents a new departure, featuring, as it does, three poets, the oldest of whom was born in 1945. For an overview, please visit our Catalogue page by clicking on this link)   Catalogue     As well as the interview, each volume contains a sketch of the poet’s life and career as well as a bibliography. Some volumes also include a gathering of critical quotations and a gallery of photographs. It is hoped that the results will be of interest to the lay reader and specialist alike.

Editorial Board Managing Editor Philip Hoy Philip Hoy was born in London in 1952, and educated at the Universities of York and Leeds. He has a Ph.D in Philosophy, a subject he taught for many years, first in the UK and then overseas. As well as founding and managing Between The Lines, he co-founded and manages its parent company, The Waywiser Press. His most recent publications are W.D. Snodgrass in Conversation with Philip Hoy (Between The Lines, London, 1998), Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy (Between The Lines, London, 1999, 2001, 2004), and Donald Justice in Conversation with Philip Hoy (Between The Lines, London, 2001). An interview with Hoy concerning Between The Lines was recently published in The Dark Horse: "The Interviewer Interviewed: N.S Thompson talks to Philip Hoy, editor of Between The Lines", The Dark Horse, 15, Summer 2003: 40-46. This interview can be read on-line at: http://www.waywiser-press.com/imprints/darkhorse.html Associate Editors Peter Dale Peter Dale was born in 1938, educated at Strode's School, Egham, Surrey, and St Peter's College, Oxford. He was Head of English at Hinchley Wood Comprehensive School for twenty-one years and for a similar period shared the editing of Agenda with William Cookson. Currently he edits the poetry page for Oxford Today and is a freelance poet, translator and editor.     His verse publications include: Under the Breath (Anvil, London, 2002), One Another (Waywiser, London, 2002), Da Capo (Agenda Editions, London, 1997), Edge to Edge: New and Selected Poems (Anvil, London, 1996), Earth Light (Hippopotamus Press, Frome, 1991), A Set of Darts: Epigrams for the Nineties [with W.S. Milne and Robert Richardson] (Big Little Poem Books, Grimsby, 1990), Too Much of Water (Agenda Editions, London, 1983), One Another (Agenda Editions, London/Carcanet New Press, Manchester, 1978), Cross Channel (Hippopotamus Press, Frome, 1977), The Storms (Macmillan, London, 1968), Mortal Fire: Selected Poems (Agenda Editions, London,1976), Mortal Fire (Macmillan, London, 1970). His translations include: Wry-Blue Loves and other Poems: a verse translation of Les Amours jaunes by Tristan Corbière, A Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Translation, Anvil, London, 2005, Dante: The Divine Comedy, terza-rima translation, (Anvil 1996, 1998, 2001, 2003), Poems of Jules Laforgue, verse translation with facing text, (Anvil, 2001), Poems of François Villon, verse translation with facing text, (Anvil, 2001), Dante: The Divine Comedy (Anvil, London, 1996), Poems of Jules Laforgue (Anvil, London, 1986), Narrow Straits: Poems from the French (Hippopotamus Press, Frome, 1985), François Villon: Selected Poems (Macmillan/Penguin Books, London, 1973), The Seasons of Cankam: Love Poems from the Tamil [with Kokilam Subbiah] (Agenda Editions, London, 1974). Dale's An Introduction to Rhyme was published by Bellew/Agenda Editions, London, in 1998.     Dale can be heard reading 53 of his poems on the Poetry Archive's CD, Peter Dale Reading from His Poems (The Poetry Archive, London, 2006).     He is currently working on a new volume of poems and has just completed a verse-translation of Paul Valéry's Charmes for publication by Anvil in 2007/8.     J. D. McClatchy J.D. McClatchy was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1945, and educated at Georgetown University and Yale. For many years, he taught at Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and other universities. He is now Professor of English at Yale. Since 1991, he has served as editor of The Yale Review.     McClatchy's verse publications include: Division of Spoils: Selected Poems (Arc, 2003), Hazmat (Knopf, 2002) [a Pulitzer Prize finalist], Ten Commandments (Knopf, 1998), The Rest of the Way (Knopf, 1992), Stars Principal (Macmillan,1986), Scenes from Another Life (Braziller1981). His prose publications include: American Writers at Home (Library of America, 2004), Twenty Questions (Columbia UP, 1998), White Paper (Columbia UP, 1989). [Winner of Poetry Society of America's Melville Cane Award]. Amongst the books he has edited are: Poets of the Civil War (Library of America, 2005), Edna St Vincent Millay's Selected Poems (2003), Horace: The Odes (2002), James Merrill's Collected Novels and Plays (2002), James Merrill's Collected Poems (with Stephen Yenser) (Knopf, 2001), Bright Pages: Yale Writers 1701-2001 (2001), Longfellow's Poems and Other Writings (Library of America, 2000), Several volumes in the series, The Voice of the Poet (including ones featuring John Ashbery, W.H. Auden, Louis Bogan, H.D., Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Phyllis McGinley, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, and Richard Wilbur) (Random House Audiobooks, 2000-2002), The Vintage Book of World Poetry (1996), The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (1990), Woman in White: Poems by Emily Dickinson (Folio Society, 1991), The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (Vintage, 1990; revised edition, 2003), Poets on Painters (1988), Recitative: Prose by James Merrill (North Point, 1986), Anne Sexton: The Artist and Her Critics (Indiana, 1978). He has translated: Carmen (Abbeville, 2001) and The Magic Flute (Abbeville, 2000).     McClatchy has written the libretti for eight operas in recent years, with performances at such venues as the Lincoln Centre, Covent Garden and the Los Angeles Opera. He has also written the texts for several song cycles.     In 1996 McClatchy was appointed a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, and served until 2003 when he was named to the Academy's Board of Directors. In 1998 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the following year was elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honours, McClatchy has been awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets and the Governor's Arts Award in Connecticut, as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.     He lives in Stonington, Connecticut, and in New York City. Editorial Assistant Ryan Roberts Ryan Roberts was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1973. He was educated at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Science and Certificate of Advanced Study in Library and Information Science. Since 2000, he has worked at Lincoln Land Community College in Springfield, Illinois, where he holds the position of Faculty Librarian.     Roberts was a contributor to On Account of Sex: An Annotated Bibliography on the Status of Women in Librarianship 1993-1997 (Scarecrow Press, 2000, 2006), and contributed "Julian Barnes" and "Cross Channel: Stories" to The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story (New York: Facts on File, 2007). He is the author of "Bloody Golden Eggs Again!", Authors' Review of Books no. 10 (Summer/Fall 1999), which can be read online by clicking on this link: "Bloody golden eggs again!" and he maintains the official websites for the novelists Ian McEwan and  Julian Barnes, the poet James Fenton and the biographer Hermione Lee. With the help of Julian Barnes, Roberts is compiling a bibliography of the author's writings. He is also co-editing with Vanessa Guignery Conversations with Julian Barnes (University of Mississippi Press, 1998/9).

BTL an imprint of THE WAYWISER PRESS