Review of Riddle Fence by Llyw Evans in gotpoetry.com

Riddle Fence, Issue One; Mark Callanan, Ed.; 2007
Reviewed by Llyw Evans

The front and back covers of Riddle Fence each feature a coloured photo by Scott Walden of a desolate community centre or fraternity lodge—a chair and two speakers sitting on the floor of one, a dartboard and poppy-strewn veterans' photos hanging on a wall of the other. Such desolation is unintentionally symbolic of the emptiness to be found between the glossy covers of this new literary journal out of Newfoundland.

Not surprisingly, Issue One is comprised mostly of authors who are important unto their own closed circle in St. John's and a few politically correct critics and editors in Ontario who take pity on them. And, to be frank, most of the material supplied by these authors appears to be bottom-of-the-barrel throwaways: slushpile poetic leftovers and third-rate ‘rants’—written over coffee on a word processor two hours before deadline. The exceptions—although quite fine when and where they do appear—are rather few and far between, to say the least.

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