The end of Scryfa

This week the twelfth and (probably) final number of Scryfa was published. I received my copies with mixed feelings. As I had hoped, it included my long poem Men of Great Spirit, about the voyage from Newlyn to Australia last year of the Spirit of Mystery, commemorating the 1854 Mystery voyage. It had already been published on the website of Pete Goss, the captain of Spirit, but it was good to see it in hard copy. On the other hand, this was the end of Simon Parker's attempt, for the time being anyway, to publish a series of selections of the best new work by Cornish writers. He and it have done me proud, for I have had a poem or a story in six of the twelve numbers, including the first and the last. I am sad, though, to see Scryfa meet the same fate as the two series of the Cornish Review, and for similar financial reasons. Over a hundred writers, many of them new and/or unknown and otherwise unpublished, have seen a major outlet discontinued. To use the Cornish dialectal expression of a bygone age, 'Woss do wed'n?' ('What can be done about it?') Nothing, I imagine, at least for the foreseeable future. But that doesn't mean that the writing will stop. No doubt other opportunities will arise eventually.