Letter of the Week

Every week, on this page, we will show a different letter from a selection of letters from Paul O'Prey's books on Robert Graves correspondence In Broken Images and Between Moon and Moon.

Date: 11 OCT 1950

Recipient: Reeves, James (1909-1978)

Location: Canellun

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~~Sept~~ October 11 1950 (Posted in pocket - sorry)

Dearest James:

The problem of encouraging young poets and giving them a market -

Were you and I encouraged?

I wasn't. I published pamphlets of my own poems, from my army pay, and sent them round. And a publisher whom I didn't know did a small volume and sold two editions of it. But I had nothing printed before that, except a poem I sent to the Spectator and poems in a magazine'' I edited at school.

If I were an unknown poet now, I'd select my four best poems, have them printed on a cricket-fixture card, for a couple of £s, and send them round to selected addresses; not send them toa poetry magazine. I'd put a note at the top that these were the first and rarest items of Robert Graves's poetic publications and advise recipients to keep them in a cellophane envelope in their safes, after getting them by heart.

But as I'm not an unknown poet . . .

Anyhow, put me down as a £5 guarantor to show that I think you know what you're doing. As for sending poems, I can't. New Yorker have bought an option on all my poems (universal rights) and what they refuse goes to Janet Adam Smith of Spectator (on request) and what she refuses goes to Times Literary Supplement (on request) and as I get about £20 to £30 for a short poem from the New Yorker and £7 or £9 from Spectator, it isn't economical to print elsewhere, especially as I don't write many poems. I'll have a new collection of about 25 out in April but that's four years' work.

The Gospels continue to engross every spare and unspare minute and I have refused about 20 offers to write on this and that, for this or that, especially poetry, etc.

If I find any unknowns who are up to standard I'll send them to you.

If we hear of anyone who could bring out those records - a pity that there wasn't better liaison between you and Ethel - we'll be delighted.

I have a little cough, sir', etc. When I once tried to get permission to print a cowboy ballad in that book of mine about ballads I was told that it was copyright because the editor 'had established the text'. The same is true of me and the little cough, sir. If I didn't write it, who the hell did, tell me that! You see you can't; and I've put my name to it as the 'Establisher of the Text' - see? I'm protected by the Copyright Act, see? You just try to rob me of my literary property.

Love from us all

Robert

Write me down as a subscriber to Quarto.

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