Syd Harrex: Retrospective for an autumnal poet

With the publication in December 2007 of Dougie’s Ton & 99 Other Sonnets, Syd Harrex’s sixth volume of poetry, the time seems right to mount a retrospective. Retrospectives are common in the world of visual arts, but not something ‘done’ in the literary world, except perhaps in the form of a feschrift — a form more generally reserved for retiring scholars. Aspiring young poets and their more practiced peers find publication space in journals like Kunapipi that provide a place for the cohabitation and intercourse between new creative and scholarly work, but these journals could do more for the established poet.