OFF RADAR: ‘simple cells’ and ‘Bashō in Acadia’
Former Puckerbrush Review contributor Mark Rutter’s words at play
By Dana Wilde
“simple cells” by Mark Rutter; InkConcrete, United Kingdom, 2020; 72 pages, paperback, $6.26.
Readers who remember the now-retired Puckerbrush Review may be interested to find out that Mark Rutter, a frequent contributor to the magazine, is still hard at work in his home in England and has a new collection of poems, “simple cells.”
UMaine professor Constance Hunting founded the influential Puckerbrush Review in 1978, editing and publishing it until her death in 2006; Sanford Phippen then took up the reins for six more years, and the last issue appeared in 2012, a long and distinguished run for a small literary magazine. Rutter, who taught writing at the UMaine Orono and UMaine Machias in the 1990s and 2000s, is a poet well-known to Puckerbrush and Down East readers. He returned to his native England in 2003 and now teaches at the University of Winchester, but has summered every year in Surry (until the pandemic struck) and retains ties to Tatlin Press, a fine arts hand-press publisher in Bangor. Maine remains on his mind.