[Full text]: "The prosaic difficulties of a troubled world have complicated work on an international reference book on poets who write in English. With a preface by the Poet Laureate, C. Day Lewis, Contemporary Poets of the English Language is the first book on the subject for more than 10 years and the only one to include non-white poets from Asia and Africa: it will be published in October by The St. James Press of Chicago and London. Its American editor-in-chief, Mrs. Rosalie Murphy, says she ran into many problems. In Nigeria, the questionnaire sent to Wole Soyinka was not passed on to him in prison, where he has been for two years; while the entry on Christopher Okigbo had to be dropped after Mrs. Murphy had confirmed a report that he had been killed in the civil war. Then there were many black South African poets who have escaped from or otherwise left the country and still move from place to place: Bloke Modisane, believed to have left South Africa on foot in 1950, was traced to London. Minor racial complications occurred in this country, too. Most poets from Wales put down "Welsh" as their nationality, although some admitted to "Anglo-Welsh." Most Scots preferred "British," while some northern Irish put "British-Irish." In America, nearly all Negroes called themselves "Black," although LeRoi Jones added exotically "African-American-Ancient Egyptian."