POF welcomes Alison Brackenbury:, from Monday 2nd November

I never met Jon Silkin, but Anne's post suggests to me that a good note to sign out on would be a grateful salute to Jon, and all the footsoldiers of poetry. (Salt has a small battalion of them, Chris, including Jane on the Horizon).

It's probably no accident that Stand was the first literary magazine I subscribed to. (I encountered Stand because the Arts Council had given a grant to put literary magazines in public libraries, during the year (75/76) when I was studying librarianship in Newcastle. A librarian criticised this scheme in a professional magazine, and I wrote an indignant defence - appreciated, I have to say, by at least one other librarian.)

I've stayed a subscriber for over thirty years. Stand is an admirable magazine, which introduced me to some outstanding poems, including translations. But I might well have let the subscription slide at some particularly chaotic or penurious time, if it had not been for Jon. Every renewal slip had a handwritten note, usually beginning 'Dear Alison' and including 'I hope'- I felt I could not help to destroy Jon Silkin's faith in human nature! The magazine is still going, and the editorial team includes at least one editor, Jon Glover, who I believe used to go out selling bundles of 'Stand' in its early days.

Footleather and patient handwritten notes- There's still a lot of this dedicated, underpaid (or unpaid) slog in the poetry world. A surprising amount of it is done by people who aren't poets; some of it is done by people who are excellent poets, and who are eating into the limited time they have for their own work.

As a reader and a writer, I've benefited for over thirty years from the efforts of people who are often hidden. I know some of them are present, some still hidden behind user names, on this forum, so this is a rare chance to say thank you. And thank you, Jane, for inviting me here!

Yes, many thanks for being here, Alison. And I look forward to your next book ...