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Here\\u2019s how the\\xa0Carcanet Press website\\xa0describes him:\\xa0Michael Schmidt\\xa0FRSL, poet, scholar, critic and translator, was born in Mexico in 1947; he studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford, before settling in England. Among his many publications are several collections of poems and a novel,\\xa0The Colonist\\xa0(1981), about a boy\\u2019s childhood in Mexico. He is general editor of PN Review and founder as well as managing director of Carcanet Press."

Michael has been applying his judgement publishing poetry and fiction for more than fifty years \\u201cdiscovering\\u201d and rediscovering, along the way, many of the greatest writers of our age.

We met at the Carcanet offices in Manchester to talk about, among others things, what he does; Germans in Mexico; the love of poetry; The Harvard Advocate; magazines as good tools for book editors; the importance of the past; the difference between editing books and magazines; poets John Ashbery and Edgell Rickword; writers starting on the left; generous patrons: Baron Robert Gavron; prosody; syllabics; leaving room for the reader; overproduction being a straight path to bankruptcy; an education at Oxford; Milton; the\\xa0Understanding Poetry\\xa0anthology; writing letters; the centrality of politics; notions of balance and continuity; principles of permanence and change; the difference between taste and judgement; catalysts; the Yiddish saying: \\u201cOne word is not enough, two is too many.\\u201d Changing literary culture; Wallace Stevens; enhancing, extending and revitalizing the language\\u2026all this in tandem with a chorus of Manchester trams piping in, in the background, throughout the conversation.