Propel is a carefully curated and exciting magazine, so when Anthony asked me to edit the seventh issue I immediately said yes, eager to read what the new poets are writing. I like that each issue is edited by a different editor, because it allows poets to try another’s tastes if they haven’t been successful before. I also like the idea that the magazine might be useful to talent scouts, which gave my task an extra edge. I’d like to thank everyone who sent work, and commiserate with those who weren’t accepted – I could only choose twenty poems, from just twenty poets. I opened each document with anticipation, and liked much more than I could accept.

The trawl through the thousands of poems from almost four hundred entries took weeks. I read slowly, hoping not to miss a stunner, alert to new ways of making a poem. If there was any doubt in my mind I stopped and read it again as open-mindedly and attentively as I could. Once I’d narrowed my longlist down to about eighty my reading got even slower. I kept asking myself: what is a poem? What can it do? I don’t know the answer to those questions, except that poetry can be an ineffable art, rather like trying to understand an animal. And, like being with an animal, I had to go by instinct – when I reread, if a poem gave me a pleasurable feeling of recognition, I sensed that here was something special. I’d switch into learning mode. What new world is this writer creating? Why does the imagery and tone feel like a good friend? Even if that friend is having a hard time, I wanted their company.

My twenty selections are an eclectic bunch and I admire them all. There are three long poems interspersed by one-pagers and shorts. Very short poems are hard to write well – I admit I was on the lookout for these, and was amply rewarded. Millie Guille’s ‘Auburn’ is deceptively simple but grew each time I read it. The standard one-page-long poem is arguably the easiest size to do well, but each word has to earn its place. Every word sears in Erica Hesketh’s ‘Postpartum’. Sometimes it’s the ending which sells a poem to me, as in Eira Elisabeth Murphy’s ‘Simulation’, or Yaz Nin’s ‘Fathers who were soldiers can’t play hide and seek, it’s in the manifesto sis’, and titles such as the latter entice too. Longer poems also have their challenges, needing to sustain tension, and Stuart Charlesworth’s ‘Not About Urban Explorers’ meets them – I was gripped from the first to the last line.

I’m impressed by lyrics that hold surprises like detonations along the way, or take unexpected turns, making nimble leaps, creating a rapidity in the line, a sleight of hand. I prefer poems which feel as if the writer was compelled to write them; that they weren’t just trying to write for the sake of it, but made something about a theme that mattered to them, in words forged from flesh and blood and not just intellect. I wasn’t so impressed by submissions that were clever but lacked emotion or body – I want poems to have bodies, intellects and heart. Poems are strange things, they can seem human at times, and we are strange, aren’t we? But we’re on this even stranger living planet, and I’m fascinated by work that engages with that. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this issue as much as I did as I was compiling it. 

— Pascale Petit
September 2023