names

Never explain, never apologise, they say. But I thought the name of this blog called for a bit of a journey back in time, in case anyone was, well, curious about it. In the late 1960s the American poet Fred Buck, who was at that time in Cambridge, started a free duplicated poetry magazine, along the lines of The English Intelligencer. It was just a few foolscap pages stapled in the top left corner, and sent out to anyone interested enough to send the editor a stamp. It was called The Curiously Strong, a phrase Fred took from the description of a kind of mint made by Terry's that came in a tin. When he went back to Gloucester, Mass., in 1969, I took over the editorship, and the mag continued in various forms until the mid-1970s, mostly publishing slender pamphlets by poets from Peter Ackroyd to Peter Riley and John James, from Barry MacSweeney to Nick Totton. All rather a long time ago. After a brief foray into proper poetry book publishing, the name became dormant, and might have remained so except that every few years, when I bump into Mike Horowitz, he says, "Ahhh! Curiously Strong!" which has been just enough to keep it in my mind.  Out of which it emerged again the other day. 

Comments

[Heather-Rose]

Welcome to the Blogosphere.

Your poem for Jenny D is wonderful.

The phrase "curiously strong" is now well-known to us Yanks because in recent years the mints you mention have become quite trendy and are available in every supermarket.

You have a great bunch of links, but I must admit I was a bit disappointed to find that the Freebase Accordion site has nothing to do with accordions, at least as far as I can see...

[fried buick]

all poets have eyes,e.g. a reminder that one of your early mimeo publications under the minty masthead was a group of post-cambridge verses by fred buck titled 'flange'. terminally rare, not undeservedly so. you were one of the more forgiving of the cantab intellects of those days. kiss kiss.