In memory of Manifold Magazine, and Vera Rich – by Elizabeth Kay

 

Vera Rich was one of those extraordinary people who was a total one-off. Clever, funny, infuriating, multi-lingual and fiercely in favour of an independent Ukraine, she was a part of my life for fourteen years. She was revered in Ukraine and Belarus for her poetry translations, and I travelled to Ukraine with her on two occasions. Vera never needed to embellish stories – her life had been quite exciting enough. She edited the unique Manifold Magazine, and I remember her saying, oh yes, people who’d had a week’s holiday in Prague would send me poems about their extensive knowledge of the place. I spent a week in Prague hiding from the Secret Police in a circus… And then there was the time, after Poland was once again a free country, when they saw a police car broken down by the side of the road and stopped to help. The driver kept staring at Vera, until she asked him if he knew her. He stood up very straight, clicked his heels and said, “I had the honour to interrogate you in 1965.”

Manifold 29 was published in Spring 1998, after a gap of 29 years since issue 28 (which Vera claimed was a record). It was nominally a quarterly magazine, though

the schedule was not kept rigorously. Issue 50 was originally scheduled for summer 2005, but Vera couldn’t manage it due to illness. She died in December 2009, and issue 50 was eventually published in 2010, as a tribute to her.

Competitions were a major part of the attraction of the magazine, and a wonderful incentive to write a poem about something you hadn’t considered before, in a form you’d never used. There were always at least  two competitions running:

A “Set theme” competition. Themes included:

·       Lighthouses (marking the 300^th anniversary of Britain’s first lighthouse)

·       Traffic

·       Hungary

·       “Crystal” in the title

·       Roses

 

A “Challenge” competition, which usually specified a verse form: Challenges set included:

·       Trisyllabic rhymes

·       Pleiadic (a form devised by Vera)

·       “Venus” – Bahdanovic “romantic stanza” form

·       Rustavelian quatrains

·       Tetractys/Tetractid ring

 

Sometimes these competitions were judged by a guest judge, sometimes by one of the readers, and sometimes by Vera herself.

The nature of the prize was “points” towards the Century Chapbook scheme. A poet who accumulated a hundred points was entitled to have Vera/Manifold publish a chapbook of their poems. At least a dozen of these were produced, including “The Spirit Collection” and “First Frush”.

For some competitions, a chapbook of the best entries was produced.

There was also an “issue prize” for the best poem of each issue, with a similar assortment of judges.

The effect of all these competitions was to get Manifold contributors writing poetry as never before – despite the almost complete lack of financial incentive. The pleiadic is a verse form devised by Vera, so-called because of its seven stanzas. The highlighted parts of stanzas 2 to 7 together make up a repeat of the whole of the first stanza, with each part in turn appearing in the same position in the new stanza as it did in the first. Each line is in iambic pentameter, and the repeats cover respectively 4, 4, 2, 4, 4 and 2 syllables. That's all there is to it...

Form: the pleiadic

 DIANA’S HILL

by Elizabeth Kay

 

A windy day, Diana’s Hill - the site

Where Julie goes to fly her new red kite.

 

A windy day, that tugs at skin and bone -

It’s hard to fly a giant kite alone.

 

The summit of  Diana’s Hill is steep,

So Julie’s dad sits in the car asleep.

 

Oblivious that this place is the site

Of metamorphoses - (Actæon’s plight).

         

The line jerks tight, then pulls, and no one sees

Where Julie goes, wrist-first, above the trees.

 

Her scream thins to a high-pitched drawn-out mew -

She flaps arm-wings to fly.  Her new-found view

                                   

Is panoramic; high on feathered flight

She wheels and dives - no strings - a live red kite.

 

Theme: British anniversaries. I chose The Globe Theatre. 

CYNARA SCOLYMUS

by Elizabeth Kay

 The layers of  the onion pale beside the artichoke;

Lack of appreciation styles you a lachanophobe.

To reach the heart of anything you need to peel and poke -

No small consideration when you open up the globe.

 

Related to the thistle, it’s a flower-head  (but tough)

Its outer petals case the rest, and hide it like a cloak.

You strip them off - at first it seems you’ll never strip enough -

The layers of  the onion pale beside the artichoke.

 

It’s worth the effort, even if your fingers scald or burn;

You need all your dexterity, the patience of a Job.

But once you reach the middle - taste the subtlety - you’ll learn!

Lack of appreciation styles you a lachanophobe.

 

The game’s afoot, the play’s the thing, this treasure’s meant for all;

By saying that I think I’ve sent my subtext up in smoke...

But those who study worlds in worlds will presently recall

To reach the heart of anything you need to peel and poke.

 

Elizabethans eschewed greens, so artichokes were out -

Lachanophobic - but you couldn’t find a logophobe.

Wit, metaphor and repartee was what life was about,

No small consideration when you open up The Globe.

 

Manifold Magazine, Year’s End, 1999    Iambic heptameter, AB, AB rhyming scheme.

 And to close this, a few verses from one of Vera’s own songs, performed by herself into her seventies and loved by all.

Vera performing
The Professor's Daughter

Dad, though a professor,

Of wealth was no possessor,

And that dastardly assessor

Why, he wiped my legacy clean.

So I saw an opportunity

From my woes to find immunity

In the scholarly community

With my gift for dance and song.

So  now...I’m a learned kissogram

An intellectual blissogram

A hit and not a missogram

In the groves of academe.

 

Where I woo them with quotation,

And wow them with citation

I am the culmination

Of every scholar’s dream

 

I can quote Icelandic saga

And tales of Baba Yaga

Or strum an Indian raga

If that’s the thing for you.

 

And so on, for many verses, going through every artistic and scientific discipline you might encounter at Oxford. Sadly missed by all except the KGB, and never forgotten.