While we appreciate the playful reference to our company in your article (Are you tough enough?, Weekend, 25 April), your readers should know that Landmark is recognised for having one of the best faculty bodies in the business, and 94% of participants surveyed said the Landmark Forum made a profound, lasting difference to the way they live their lives.
Deborah Beroset
Director of public relations, Landmark
• Not the “why doesn’t poetry rhyme?” question (Letters, 19 May). I am enjoying reading the Keep it in the ground poems, and respect the choices of form made by these excellent poets. In my own poetry I use rhyme sometimes, and sometimes I don’t. That your correspondent describes himself as an older reader is hardly relevant; Wordsworth’s Prelude didn’t rhyme, nor did much of Shakespeare’s verse, before I even get on to Eliot and the rest.
Copland Smith
Manchester
• I asked my three-year old nephew what he thought a poem was. “It’s a little story read by someone with a silly voice,” he replied. Out of the mouths of babes.
Brian Harrison-Jennings
Huddersfield
• I suggest (Letters, 21 May) that charities be encouraged to offer an annual subscription-only membership option. The donor would pay a yearly subscription of their choosing and the charity would refrain from sending glossy pamphlets, make no phone calls and write no letters asking for further donations. The beneficiaries would be the donors, the planet, and possibly the charities too.
Alison Leonard
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire
• As a lifelong Labour voter the election was the final straw. So for a late birthday present I decided to join the Labour party. Having read the declarations from the leadership candidates (Seamus Milne, 21 May) I will treat myself instead to some new copies of my favourite books: The State in Capitalist Society; Harry’s Last Stand; Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Would Kendall, Cooper et al like my old copies? Seems they haven’t read them.
Andy Peacock
West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire
