The first, untitled, poem of Dwang: Issue One is an editorial statement of purpose, demanding that honesty be the foundation of a poem. Death, humour, beauty, fear, human weakness – both moral and physical – and the violence that people do to others are all threads that run through Dwang. With 50 contributors, and dedicated to the poet William Wantling, this limited-edition, hand-bound anthology of outsider poetry, prose and graphics is a thing of beauty. And darkness.

Violence is explored in the immediacy of Jim Burns’ "Kelly’s Story" and with it, the unfathomable nature of man. The narrator in Fred Voss’s "Machinist Wanted" is haunted by the idea that his machines will go on to kill, while at the same time describing the alienating nature of his work and the lack of choice he has in his tasks. Nothing in life or death is simple and ambiguities and unanswered questions confront and unsettle the reader.

Billy Childish’s poem "the person sometimes known as billy childish" gives an account of dying in which the narrator eases the passing of another person with "a good lie, a true lie". Whitney Woolf’s quietly measured "Racetrack Red" and Ben Myers’ "She’s So New York", describe beauty, mediated by an atmosphere of aloneness, bringing to mind an Edward Hopper portrait.

There is black humour in Geoff Hattersley’s "Breathless" and "Rump Poem" – the latter painting a brilliant picture of the physical frailty and decline of a third husband – the previous two having been suffocated by a wife employing unusual means. Meanwhile, Salena Godden’s excellent "I’m Gonna Move to Hastings" is funny and fast paced, with a great hook and some dark plans. There is also a warmth for people in the poems – in Christopher Twigg’s "Barry" and Jim Burns’ "The Number", a poem about the elusiveness of particular childhood memories along with a sense of fondness for others.

Issue one of Dwang ends with William Wantling and his poem "Of This World" which serves as a powerful postscript on futility – a piece of haunting rhetoric to conclude this interesting and diverse collection of poems.
Benedict Newbery
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