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 U