Nil by Mouth
poetry magazines reviewed
Aabye C, Gerald England (20 Werneth Avenue, Hyde, Cheshire, SK14 5NL, 48pp/A5, £4.50 each).
This is the last issue of New Hope International, the magazine that pretended to be someone else. NHI/Aabye occupied a defunct or abandoned small press mainstream. It was the sort of thing that younger poets might have rebelled against if there hadn't been other, more successful poetries to go for. Nowadays they'd be rebelling against the predictably 'innovative' poetry that passes for normative in the small press scene. The worst poem in this issue of NHI might be dubbed a beat poem. It is called Yoni and it's by Aongus Murtagh. "swallow the tides that my mind's voice presents to your startled face now and again oh swallow" Each word is a separate line. Sadly for Aongus, Gerald has done swallowing now.
The Burning Bush 4, Michael S. Begnal & Kevin Higgins (3 Newcastle Road, Galway, Ireland, 72pp/A5, £2.50 each/£5 for three).
This is the most interesting issue of the Burning Bush so far, but the prose is far better than most of the poetry. Maureen Gallagher demolishes Una Agnew's critical tract The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh for what she considers to be blatant and absurd New Age revisionism. Kavanagh on a big breasted hill doing indiscreet Tai Chi for the benefit of holiday makers? No pretend Druid, Kavanagh was a poet! Gallagher's writing is refreshingly direct, she has an opinion and gives it. I also enjoyed the various prose in which editors of the magazine and people associated with it historify the Galway poetry scene that brought them together. Slightly pretentious, as they chronicle each other, but it is astonishing to think of a venue putting on poetry on a Monday night with a start time of 10.30pm. Also in BB4, various prose writers debate Bukowski and there are some translations from the Irish by John Montague. The poem I like the most is by Felim Smurthwaite, called from Languedoc: Many black unsure hours I have knelt late, / and days (whole) by your shrine have I sat…"
Envoi 132, Roger Elkin (44 Rudyard Road, Biddulph Moor, Stoke-on-Trent, ST8 7JN, 176pp/A5, £3 sample/£5 current issue/£15 for 3).
Envoi seems to exist in a slightly removed world. Like a factory producing radio valves in an age of transistors, it results in a deep woody tone that does tend to blur the sounds. It has the smell and feel of Bakelite. It reminds me of lino and, like Sunday afternoons in the 1950s, it is too long. It is a house that smells of over cooked cabbage. It brings to mind an image of my father showing me how to clean my shoes in a council house in the early 1960s. These reminiscences - chatty and nostalgic - are reassuringly retro but also redundant. They are mostly typical, not specific. It all feels prematurely aged, like someone who got old quicker in order to avoid the pensions crash. It is a pair of beige trousers, or an affordable bungalow. Sometimes less is more. 128 pages is too much.
Oasis 102-105, Ian Robinson (12 Stevenage Road, London, SW6 6ES, 32pp/A5 £2.50 each/£6 for 4).
In issue 102 John Hall muses on time and memory and sees a tradition of absence, a counterpoint to the cluttered enclave of the present tradition. "A loss is not a loss unless it keeps happening. Perhaps there is a time when you are just about to lose the loss and you remember, poignantly." "This abstraction is a loop out of the real that holes out local meaning by senseless repetition. Say it often enough and it empties. If you empty it carefully enough what is left is a fine abstraction, a void or vacuum pulling back the gravity of particulars." (from Couldn't you?) This could be a quote from a nonist manifesto. In issue 103 Estill Pollock writes finely, in this case of world war two fighter planes and their aftertow: "From the bell we meet the sun in minutes, / climbing through stink and brightness. / We kill, are met and killed, in cold / over picture puzzle landscapes. // When wreckage / the colour of Kent marshes is recovered, you will find / I am twenty this autumn." (from Wing Geometry) In issue 104 I particularly liked everything printed on page 11.
You must be that rider who rode on the spot deep in Silbury Hill
for I don't know how long - you're kneeling in a white horse now
on the Wiltshire Downs, like a chalk-prospector who's struck it rich.
Richard Dove, from Moment from a Happy Day
104 also has a fine prose piece by Frederick Lightfoot and an appreciation of Christopher Middleton by Yann Lovelock, and neat haibun by Rupert Loydell and Roselle Angwin. In issue 105 Tim Allen provides a base and superstructure model of poetic creation. In his construct the poem is the base upon which the experience of the poem is built. The poetic experience is represented by an 'author's note' that sits above the abstract body of the poem like a newly liberalised economy above what used to be a place. "The engine that drives this vehicle of survival/discovery is the pun but this is not the fuel and neither is it the destination, which I can only liken to a kind of thickening of the air around the original image." (from Author's Note to Three extracts from Sea Exchange) Oasis remains one of the few reliably enjoyable poetry magazines around - it has creative prose, different kinds of poetry including translations, the odd bit of art work and (sometimes) brief reviews of things that catch the editor's eye. So much variety in so few pages (10th Muse).
Parataxis 10, Drew Milne (Trinity Hall, Cambridge, CB2 1TJ, 108pp/A5, £5 each, [email protected] for details of future issues).
There is a mystique about Parataxis, and Drew Milne, and Cambridge. It's to do with postmodern literature and literary culture, and how they are perceived. For instance, Postmodern architecture is easy and approachable - often it is criticised for being seductive and manipulative. In its most encountered forms, it has a market function. It is about high volume mass consumption or the placing of corporate entities, the pleasures of unequal exchange. Most mainstream poets wouldn't know if they were postmodern or not. As they are not marketed in terms of their relationship to modernism, they probably wouldn't give it a thought. The current association between a poetry that is self-consciously experimental in style and the term 'postmodern' is arbitrary. The use of this 'new' term has allowed for the refurbishment of a style, which is tedious, but it has also - by way of accident, as things sometimes do - resulted in some cracking lyrical and abstract poems that might never have been written otherwise.
Drew Milne, in Parataxis and beyond, does little to encourage the skewed perceptions of the postmodernly mystified and the innovatively enthused. He's just getting on with what he does - it may seem mysterious, but it isn't. Having said that, if abstract verbal collage leaves you feeling that some Rosicrucian conspiracy is going on, with academics unfairly depriving everyone in small press land of metaphorical knowledge, then reading Milne's essay, 'Speculative assertions: reading J. H. Prynne's Poems' (p.67) probably won't help. It's an essay which - amongst other things - is about the perils of using Prynne's prose to decode his poetry, thus it is oddly and subtly self referential. As Milne himself puts it, "Even if Prynne's otherwise divided labours cohered, this poetry invites ontological and ethical speculations concerning truth and language which trouble the hierarchies of prose and poetry." Milne calls for a non-academic (though no less intellectual) reading of Prynne. "Less often articulated is the experience of speculative imaginings which the poetry elicits without warranting. Bemusement, reverie, heightened attentiveness are pleasures of reading this poetry, but feel fanciful and illegitimate…" Hang on to the idea of reverie. Fanciful and illegitimate sound good to me.
There is more critical prose from Peter Nicholls - who sticks up for Swinburn - and Rod Mengham, Will Montgomery and Peter Middleton. Poems are by Andrea Brady, Clark Coolidge Peter Middleton, John Wilkinson, Stacy Doris, Ian Hunt, Keston Sutherland, Dell Olsen, Chris Emery, Ethel Malley and John Tranter. Some small press reviewers may complain that there's too much prose, but if you have an attention span of more than a few minutes then Parataxis may provide a welcome change from the usual dross.
This endangering by air, which is the simplest plant form of propagation, I think is the ultimate fantasy and somehow also origin of humans. As in: your thought blooms in me. It comes and lives and grows in me. It is the meaning of thought then. Thought and its thought at once. The word for thought is WE.
Stacy Doris, from End (Endless
Pennine Ink 23, Laura Sheridan et al. (The Gallery, Mid-Pennine Arts, Yorke Street, Burnley, BB11 1HD, 48pp/A5, £3 each).
The opening paragraph of Laura Sheridan's editorial gives a good impression of what PI is about. "…we hope we've included an assortment of dark and white, creams and caramels, hard nutty flavours and squidgy marzipan. You can dip in and take your pick or you can gorge the whole lot in one go…" Luckily, Laura does not pursue her metaphor any further. It made me feel queasy. Personally, I feel that poetry magazines should be savoury as well as sweet. Where were salt n vinegar flavour? Bovril was grossly under-represented. This is very much a magazine for people who want to have fun with words. It's unpretentious and loopy and a good place for beginners to try out their reflections, rhymes and one-line squibs. Light rhyming lyrics might be a speciality, Felicity Whitaker's Love's Alchymie has a poise that almost but not quite trips into doggerel. "It was so very nearly right / There's more to love than kissing / And when you held me in the night / It was so very nearly right".
PM Newsletter 41, Dave Cunliffe (Spring Bank, Longsite Road, Copster Green, Blackburn, BB1 9EU, 32pp/A5).
This came free with the resurrected Global Tapestry Journal. Apparently Buffy didn't kill it properly last time. Resurrection creates odd temporal effects - this doesn't cause problems as Dave has always thought it was 1974. Personally, I liked the seventies and it's nice to experience the temporal redistribution of an aspect of a period without the act being represented as something tediously postmodern and all to do with niche markets. The pongy corpse of GTJ may lack the beauty of the slayer but it has the advantage of being resistant to the market and the supposedly mainstream poetries that are its heralds. Anyway, I don't have a copy of GTJ in my box, so either I've lost it or Dave C got shafted again. In the future, supposing there is one, I will review the magazine not the newsletter as the two are merging. If anyone knows where John Coldwell lives could they let Dave Cunliffe know as they lost touch when GTJ 'died'.
Poetry Quarterly Review 19, Derrick Woolf & Tilla Brading (Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somerset, TA5 1NQ, 29pp/A4, £2 each/£7 for 4).
This issue of PQR has lots of poetry reviews plus Helen Kidd as the centrefold. The magazine listings section - which in previous issues has been tabular in form, with a row of statistics for each publication, including address and price, with never any comment - is happily absent. My copy arrived with a letter which threatens the return of this, though hopefully not in the form of that nasty table. Surely the reviews editor could review the magazines they receive, or at least get someone else to do it? As for the book reviews, they are often commentaries rather than contributions to any notional critical debate. When reviewing, this can be tempting (I sometimes do it). It lets you off having to say anything about the book. Too much of it does make for redundant reading though and PQR has too much. An author looking at a review of their book might find out who wants to please them - or, if they have forgotten their book, the review might describe it closely enough to jog their memory - but they'd get little of critical interest. What's the point? Well, you might get a quote to put on the back of your next book. "This poetry is a great pleasure" Andy Brown - "I can't recommend it too highly" Ian Parks - "This is a finely crafted anthology…" Byron Beynon - "Sweeney's poems are brilliant" Phil Simmons - "a distinct and powerful voice" Debjani Chattergee. Apart from the occasional 'quibble' (steady now) it seems that everyone writes great books. Fantastic. It's like a pep talk from the assistant manager. The best review is by Frances Presley, but then it is made easier as the book she reviews - A Folio for Fanny Howe (Spectacular Diseases, date not given) - is an argument in itself (being a series of essays about a poem and a poet). But at least she expresses an opinion and doesn't just gush. Now might be the time to rename PQR Signature or Password. They'd get a grant, and some staff, and the line between 'sales' and 'reviews' would be much less blurred.
RAW NerVZ VIII:1, Dorothy Howard (67 Court Street, Aylmer (QC), J9H 4M1, Canada, 52pp/A5(ish), US$7 each/US$26 for 4).
Haiku - like used razor blades or infected needles - need to be properly disposed of. You shouldn't leave them lying around for children to pick up and cut themselves on. If you hate someone send them anonymous haiku through the post. A good wheeze is to put up offensive stickers in trains with a haiku underneath, when good citizens try to peel the stickers off they lose a fingernail to the haiku. In prisons convicts melt the ends of old toothbrushes and embed haiku in them to make a very effective slashing weapon. In the US people have the right to bear haiku, which is why their society is so violent. If you like to read or even write haiku then RN is for you. It's full of the things (plus renga, tanka, etc.). These people really flaunt it, which would never happen in a truly moral society. I wonder what happens when people try to come off haiku? Is there a Haiku Anonymous? Haiku really screw you up. "my brains would fly / up into the trees, if I exploded / here beneath them" (Michael McClintock)
Shearsman 48-51, Tony Frazer (58 Velwell Road, Exeter, EX4 4LD, 32pp/A5, £2 each/£6 for 4, payable to Shearsman Books).
Shearsman is airy and well lit, like a flat in an attic, yet to be called a studio. Unlike 10th Muse, it comes out frequently. It gets sent lots of good poems and if you read it regularly you get the feeling that you are seeing the best or most interesting stuff being written (even if you aren't). The rough edges of edgy things are smoothed, the corners are invisible or well-connected. It seems natural, like a nicely constructed sentence. In issue 48 Gary Webster said this:
It's taken me this long to get past the 60s,
not the politics, never that, the nature worship,
and the misanthropy. This long to recover
some humanism.
from The Settling Pond
S49 leads with a poem by Christopher Middleton. Such a spectacular opening poem,
like morning mist in valley folds
deep folds with ancient peoples in them
elude the theodoliteit was a style that made the prose
of this historian, that philosopher
credible, an air of comprehensionfrom Of Being Astonished
S50 contains much prose poetry. The long, lighter than air sequence by Martin Anderson reads well - so good it could be propaganda - meditative and bewitched, it regards itself with suspicion. It is like a cynical policeman launching forth about the lifestyles and values of the young, it travels in its own territory like a stranger. "…the Other stands at a distance from us, waiting for us to approach. Only, as we walk through the mirrors into ourselves can we find it. And it is then that we realise that distance and time are so many false trajectories out of the mind of the inattentive. And that all objective categories are superfluous. Without landfall, without a horizon, we lack nothing, but the confidence to explore this land…" (from The Hoplite Journals 1) Issue 51 is just as good as the rest, which are available if pdf format on the web. The newly better than before website is reachable at www.shearsman.com - here find the magazines (from issue 47, the current issue goes up in August), sample poems from Shearsman Books and other stuff that you can find out for yourself.
Tremblestone 2, Kenny Knight (Corporation Buildings, 10F How Street, The Barbican, Plymouth, PL4 0DB, 80pp/A5, £4 each/£12 for three, payable to Tremblestone).
Tremblestone cannot be said to be settling down into its second issue, the first having been produced shortly after the last ice age, but in an editorial tempered by the passing of time, terminal moraine and only a slight sense of frustration, Kenny Knight re-establishes it as an egg in the nest of literary Plymouth. It might have trembled, but it didn't run away. Plymouth has a small literary scene and that provides Tremblestone with writers to draw on. This is a strength, though it's one that needs to be left behind. Nearly everyone in T2 is from Plymouth, or Exeter, or Totnes. Rumours that Tremblestone is just a front organisation for the Terrible Workers Party persist. Help save Tremblestone from the south west of England. If you live somewhere else, buy a copy now.
Page(s) 35-40
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The