As Hope Not Hate decided to mention me in this year's State of Hate publication earlier this month, I thought it only fair that I deign to reply. Nick Lols always gives me a chuckle when he writes how insignificant Mjolnir Magazine is, yet is somehow always significant enough to include in his State of Hate comic, which now runs to a staggering 140 pages. I would have to check, but that may be bigger than my old Beano annuals, although with more lowbrow content. At least I managed to shame you into offering it for free this year, and so at last it is value for money.
A few months ago, I had the honour of being contacted by the artist, musician and poet Robert N Taylor, who enquired about the possibility of me contributing some poems to a forthcoming anthology of the Red Salon Poets, a collective named after Robert and his wife Christina's sitting room. Naturally, I was only too pleased, and sent several poems to his wife Christina Finlayson Taylor, who was editing and also contributing to the collection, which she and her friend and fellow poetess Juleigh Howard-Hobson had named We've Seen the Same Horizon. Perhaps the greatest absence in the collection is some poetry by Robert himself, who provides a foreword, but this is not to detract from talents like Christina and Juleigh. I knew Juleigh's excellent work even before she appeared in Mjolnir Magazine, but Christina is a revelation to me, and her poetry is up there with the best I have seen. There are few who can write a convincing sonnet these days, but Christina is among them.
