DESCRIBED by its editor, Gerald Dawe, as a new magazine devoted to contemporary literature produced, in the main, by Irish writers", Krino first appeared from its Galway base in spring 1986. It was an elegant and provocatively understated debut: no swaggering editorial, plenty of white space, its fifty two pages shared out between a mere six contributors. Here was a magazine, it was plain, that wanted only the best: the Greek title, courtesy of Ezra Pound, meant "to pick out for oneself, to choose".
Before very long Krino readers were being spoilt for choice, as with subsequent issues the magazine grew in stature as surely as it did in size. Krino published not just poetry and fiction, but memoirs, interviews and reviews; it had photographs, and occasionally graphics, too. Though Irish contributors inevitably dominated, Krino kept an eye on the larger world as well, whether in the form of translations or regular feature length essays.
Ten years and 18 issues later, Gerald Dawe and Jonathan Williams have brought this rich and diverse body of work into focus in a handsome anthology. The book is carefully ordered to reflect the magazine's various areas of interest. Fiction by Jennifer Johnston, Ivy Bannister and Angela Bourke, as well as an essay by Eve Patten in the anthology's opening pages, remind us of Krino's good record in women's writing. Poems by Cathal O Searcaigh, Michael Davitt and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill back up Aodan Mac Poilin's energetic preface on behalf of the complex, multifaceted, self contradictory, incomplete, evolving, non prescriptive, wounded, but still living, civilisation still producing writing of high quality in Irish.
Another cause close to Krino's heart was Irish Modernist poetry of the Thirties, Devlin, Coffey and MacGreevy, whose new prominence over the last decade was assisted in no small part by the essays of Susan Schreibman, Hugh Haughton and J.C.C. Mays, reprinted here.
A healthy mixture of old and new has always been a Krino hallmark: among the senior figures represented here are Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Thomas Kilroy and John McGahern, while important work by John Banville and Eavan Boland forms a bridge to the generation still making and consolidating reputations during the Eighties. Poetry was always Krino's strongest suit, and the list of younger poets it published makes impressive reading, with work reprinted here by Harry Clifton, Sean Dunne, Matthew Sweeney, Michael O'Loughlin, Gerard Fanning, Paula Meehan, Vona Groarke and Conor O'Callaghan.
No less a pleasure, though, is an essay such as Dennis O'Driscoll's tribute to the Scottish poet W.S. Graham, "Professor of Silence": informative, proselytising and unavailable anywhere else, it captures the spirit of what Krino was all about as well as anything else in the book.
Krino was more, then, than just a staging post for work awaiting a more permanent home between the covers of a novel or slim volume: it was a climate of opinion, both national platform and focus. It changed over the years, of course, becoming perhaps a little top heavy with reviews in recent issues. After a move in 1991 from Galway to Dun Laoghaire it also became more irregular, and a reference in Gerald Dawe's preface to the "intractable" effects of distribution problems on top of the long hiatus since it last appeared an obvious question: will there be any more issues? Even an erratically appearing Krino remains a more enticing prospect than some of the more regular alternatives. This is a marvellous anthology, but I only hope it represents an interim report and not a signing off. {CORRECTION} 96120900018
