This item is taken from PN Review 291, Volume 53 Number 1, September - October 2026.
Letters to the Editor
Visiting Elizabeth Jennings
Dear Editors,
I write in response to PNR 290’s editorial. I feel so lucky to have met Elizabeth Jennings. I went to Oxford a number of times while working at Carcanet to help with the editing of Praises and A Poet’s Choice. We decided that the easiest way to put together the books was to send me down from Manchester. I met her in the Randolph Hotel for tea (probably blowing the Carcanet budget), Yates’s Wine Lodge (she loved the scampi and chips) and the Häagen Dazs café. An eclectic mix – and all her choice.
In the case of A Poet’s Choice, there were many, many books. Her chosen poems were indicated with a slip of newspaper as a bookmark. I took them all in their plastic bags along to the post office, packed them in boxes, wrapped them in Christmas paper, and sent them back to Blackfriars’ Street [where, after the 1996 bomb, Carcanet’s offices were located].
As for Praises, all the poems were hand-written. I typed them up back in the office, sometimes we had to guess a word or two.
I went to Oxford earlier this month for a wedding – it will always remind me of Elizabeth.
Penny Jones
Director – Kirby Jones Management Ltd
Erratum
The Editors apologise to Isobel Williams whose ‘Callimachus Versions’ was printed in PNR 290 with errors in the text. Readers can find a corrected version on the website at: www.pnreview.co.uk/magazines/pnr-290/52-6.
Dear Editors,
I write in response to PNR 290’s editorial. I feel so lucky to have met Elizabeth Jennings. I went to Oxford a number of times while working at Carcanet to help with the editing of Praises and A Poet’s Choice. We decided that the easiest way to put together the books was to send me down from Manchester. I met her in the Randolph Hotel for tea (probably blowing the Carcanet budget), Yates’s Wine Lodge (she loved the scampi and chips) and the Häagen Dazs café. An eclectic mix – and all her choice.
In the case of A Poet’s Choice, there were many, many books. Her chosen poems were indicated with a slip of newspaper as a bookmark. I took them all in their plastic bags along to the post office, packed them in boxes, wrapped them in Christmas paper, and sent them back to Blackfriars’ Street [where, after the 1996 bomb, Carcanet’s offices were located].
As for Praises, all the poems were hand-written. I typed them up back in the office, sometimes we had to guess a word or two.
I went to Oxford earlier this month for a wedding – it will always remind me of Elizabeth.
Penny Jones
Director – Kirby Jones Management Ltd
Erratum
The Editors apologise to Isobel Williams whose ‘Callimachus Versions’ was printed in PNR 290 with errors in the text. Readers can find a corrected version on the website at: www.pnreview.co.uk/magazines/pnr-290/52-6.
This item is taken from PN Review 291, Volume 53 Number 1, September - October 2026.