Editorial

In England the poet and the novelist are obstructed in a way which is not yet common in New Zealand. If they cannot prove that they spend a set number of hours each week actively writing, they are liable to be directed into 'useful' employment—mines, factories, or that greater horror, government departments. It would have gone hard with Rilke, Waiting eleven years for the Duinese Elegies, if he had lived in post-war England. Such thing are not yet an obstruction to the New Zealand writer, whatever the future might hold in the way of manpower direction. But there is one problem, certainly very acute, which may well be more acute here than in the rest of the world. We suffer from a serious lack of publishers.

The Caxton Press is of course the mainstay, but one press does not make a heaven. Although if does not print a great number of books, it is edifying to see a businessman putting out even a few products upon which he is sure to lose money. But the choice of books is different matter. There are three volumes so far in the Caxton Poets series. The choice of Baxter and Brasch was good, but Hart-Smith's mediocre volume raises the question whether the materials and effort could not have been better devoted to a volume from Curnow, Dowling, Wilson or Campbell. A cheap edition of Gaskell's The Big Game was worth while. But where was the point in printing a similar cheap edition of Sargeson's When the Wind Blows—a fragment already merged into a novel to be published in England? Again, what purpose was served by the vague and repetitious Creative Problems in New Zealand, when all that was said there had been already said? And finally, what motive stood behind those delicately hand-set volumes of ballads, all of them already available in any good collection?

But the problem is a general one, rather than restricted to the policy of one press. If Glover printed nothing but contemporary prose and verse, a large amount of good work would remain unprinted, simply because there are in adequate physical resources in the country. An occasional grubby volume has emerged from the Handcraft Press; the Pelorus Press has, it seems, been printing the same volume of verse for two years, and is still printing it; there are rumours of a new series of poets to come from A. H. and A. W. Reid. But the situation is still unsatisfactory. The duty of initiative still rests with the magazines.

Insofar as this magazine has any policy, it is the print as much poetry, fiction, polemic and scholarship, as we, in fallibility, judge good. To that end, we have done without reviews and commentary, choose neither to do battle with muddle-headed painters in Christchurch and inhibited censors in Wellington, nor to discuss the duty of the state towards musicians, actors and writers. This neglect springs not from a contempt of these causes, but from a feeling that they are already well covered, and not, essentially, as important as the job of publishing poems, stories and essays, Such an intention is perhaps hardly a policy, but it is a purpose, and a job to be done. And in doing this job, we intend to print as much of the work of each contributors a possible, either in one number, or in successive numbers. All writers would prefer to have their own volumes on sale, but because that is not often possible, it will be our purpose to bring out as much of their work as we can. We thing this is a job worth doing because other ways do not exist.