Mark Dow writes: Some readers might be interested in this footnote on prosody.

In our 2021 interview (PNR 263), Nigel Fabb and I briefly discussed T.S. Omond’s A Study of Metre (1903) and its attempt to replace scansion by syllables with scansion by ‘time-spaces’. I asked Fabb if Omond’s book is much discussed by linguists, and he replied, ‘I cannot think of anyone referring to it.’

I have since come across a discussion of Omond by Catherine Ing in her Elizabethan Lyrics: A Study of the Development of English Metres and their Relation to Poetic Effect (1951). Ing explains that Omond’s ‘isochronous periods’ are what we typically call feet, and she writes: ‘I believe that Omond’s ‘syllabic variety with temporal uniformity’ is a true and illuminating suggestion if we interpret it elastically: if we substitute for ‘uniformity’ some word like ‘balance’ or ‘proportion’; and if we look for this balance or proportion in units larger than that of the foot.’

Mark Haworth-Booth writes: I was very interested by the letter from Dave Wynne-Jones on ‘Political Content, and Discontent’ in issue 277. He noted that ‘even though some Palestinian poets are being featured online, where else is the political poetry about the catastrophe in Gaza?’ He added that ‘Within my workshop group, poets seem to be struggling with the enormity of what is happening, but the performance poetry circuit could have been expected to have more nimbleness and resilience in its responses. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a marked lack of engagement there too.’

I am chair of the North Devon branch of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. We have held Gaza vigils in Barnstaple High Street since October. Each week several people will read out texts – which are often poems and often by Palestinian writers. The poem ‘If I must die’ by Refaat Alareer (assassinated by the Israeli military on 6 December) has been read on many occasions. Kites have been made, inscribed with words from the poem, and brought to our vigils. We have heard poems by Abdelfattah Abusrour, Mahmoud Darwish, Suheir Hammad, Aurora Levins Morales, Michael Rosen, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and many others. I wonder how widely this has been replicated around the country. I have never known so much poetry to be recited in our streets and listened to so intently by gatherings ranging from twenty to forty people. Local poets have read their own efforts too, often written in response to the latest news. Since October, I have found it difficult to write about anything other than Gaza.

Years ago an article in the TLS referred to the ‘crowd poets’ of ancient Greece. I’ve always thought Adrian Mitchell was a fine modern example of this, especially when I heard him belt out ‘To Whom It May Concern’ (‘Tell me lies about Viet Nam’). Perhaps some of mine are ‘crowd’ or street poems, especially the one involving call-and-response with those present. I’ve read others to poetry groups away from the streets and been touched by the applause that followed each Gaza poem: people seem to need to hear Gaza poems and to acknowledge them.