I READ the article by Simon Donohue (LET, June 16), concerning people who have received letters from the ISP telling them they had been nominated as Poet of the Year for 1997, at the same time being invited to Washington to read their work.

No doubt they were also told they were among the top two per cent of poets whose work had been submitted and they had read.

And more than likely, it was a piece of work they had entered in a competition run by The National Library of Poetry in America.

It appears these two organisations work in conjunction with one another.

In the Writers and Artists Yearbook for 1993 on page 260 there is a comment by a certain gentleman who says: "anyone who failed to get poetry published in America had most likely run out of stamps."

While finding his comment amusing, I also found it to be cause for thought.

J YATES (Mr), Leopold Way, Blackburn.

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