Poetry Index
Magazines
These reviews are based on personal opinion, but aim to give readers a fair idea of each magazine before they purchase. Note: unless otherwise stated, subs include p&p. Publications size A5, and open to new and established writers.
AGENDA (#VOL. 40, NO. 4, AUTUMN/WINTER 2004)
Editor, Patricia McCarthy, The Wheelwrights, Fletching Street, Mayfield, East Sussex, TN20 6TL
[email protected] www.agendapoetry.co.uk
Subs: £28/4 (concession £22); single copy £10 (depending on double or single issue).
Circulation: 1,000+. Payments: Free copies of magazine and variable payment
Response/Rejection: Three months
Editor’s comment: We are seeking well crafted poetry that is urgent, takes risks and comes from the heart (but not sentimental). There are special opportunities for young poets (16 to late 30s) to appear in Broadsheets. Young essayists/reviews are also invited to submit to the magazine, but are advised to contact their editor first with the subject. Agenda specialises in international issues, special issues and general anthology issues.
Requirements
No more than six poems by snail mail with SAE. By email: word document attachment.
Review
This issue is devoted to the theme of ‘translation as metamorphosis’: poems in translation, versions, essays and reviews on the topic of translation. The poetry comes from as far afield as Tunisia, Kurdistan and Persia and as near as Ireland, and helpful short introductions are provided to some of the poets. The one on the work of Russian poet Leonid Aronzon (translations by Richard McKane) demonstrates the important role translation can play in introducing writers to new international audiences, and in preserving their reputation in their homeland. Apparently, some of these translated poems have not yet been printed in their original Russian. Aronzon has the imagination of a surrealist, as the poem ‘Women have roses’ indicates:
Woman have roses in their breasts,
in their shoulders and smiles they rest,
a butterfly of the night flies to them,
entrapped by its mistake.
The classics are well represented: Catullus, Baudelaire, Tsvetaeva and Montale. I was also pleased to see Nigel McLoughlin’s fine translations of some of the 20th century’s most important Irish language poets, Mairtín Ó Direáin and Seán Ó Ríordáin, and one of this century’s most exciting younger poets, Cathal Ó Searcaigh. This comes from his ‘November 1994’:
And if the darkness between us became like the sea,
I’d make a boat of this bed, plunge its bow
through the waves that barge the heart’s quay.
There are comprehensive reviews of recent publications and the magazine concludes with a series of elegies by poets such as Todd Swift, John O’Donnell and John E. Field.
BUZZWORDS ONLINE MAGAZINE
Editor, Rachel Playforth. something pretty@btinternet www.buzzwords.ndo.co.uk
submissions to: [email protected].
Subs: None. Site visits: unknown. Payments: None. Response/Rejection: Two to three weeks for notification; up to three months before publication.
Editor’s comment: We are interested in poetry and short fiction on any subject but prefer shorter, contemporary work.
Requirements
None but short stories should be under 3,000 words in length.
Review
A neatly designed and easily navigable website that features poetry and prose from writers all over the world. Currently, it includes work by 50 poets and prose-writers, which can be accessed either through the author index or by the title. The site cleverly uses frames so that the featured writer’s work appears centre page, with biographical information and links to their other work on the margin, although it was occasionally confusing as to which section I was scrolling up and down.
And as for the poets, I quite enjoyed the simplicity of David Woods’ ‘At her desk’ and the sensual detail of Sadi Ranson-Polizotti’s ‘Daily Ritual’:
The pharmacienne sells me
A balm of chamomile and clover,
One marbled drop for each breast
while Alasdair Cook’s ‘Holders for missing things’ has a certain ghostly quality reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Art of Losing’. There are also good poems by Michael Paul Ladanyi, John Thomson and Jan Imgrund. Buzzwords is that rare commodity, an online journal that exercises quality control on the deluge of email submissions which it undoubtedly receives from around the world.
THE GEORGIA REVIEW (#VOL. LVII, NO 2, SUMMER 2004)
Editor, T.R. Hummer, 012 Gilbert Hall, The University of Georgia,
Athens, GA 30602-9009, USA www.uga.edu/garev
Subs: US$30/Stg£15.68/4; single copy US$9/Stg£4.70. Circulation: 4,000
Payments: US$3/Stg£1.56 per line, prose US$40/Stg£20.92 per printed page; plus one-year subscription and extra copy of the issue in which the author’s work appears
Response/Rejection: Between four to six months; subsequent publication time can vary, but is usually within six months.
Editor’s comment
We seek the very best poetry and fiction, whether by Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners or by little-known and previously unpublished writers. We are looking for creative personal essays and informed, thesis-oriented essays that view their subjects against a broad perspective, provocative work to engage both the intelligent general reader and the specialist. For the most part, we are not interested in scholarly articles.
Requirements
Submissions limited to one story or one essay or three to five poems. We do not accept simultaneous or electronic submissions. Submission guidelines on the website.
Review
This prestigious US literary journal, founded in 1947 by the University of Georgia, has acquired a reputation for publishing top quality work. This issue takes the theme of ‘Poetry and Poecis’ and includes essays by John Kinsella, who asks whether there is such a thing as an Australian Pastoral (there is, but it is about confrontation, recognition, conversation and reconciliation, says Kinsella), Jim Ferris and David Baker, and poetry from, among others, Rita Dove, a former US Poet Laureate, who offers an enchanting definition of herself in the poem ‘Describe Yourself in Three Words or Less’:
I’m not the kind of person who praises
openly, or for profit; I’m not the kind
who will steal a scene unless
I’ve designed it. I’m not a kind at all,
in fact: I’m itchy and pug-willed,
gnarled and wrong-headed,
never amorous but possessing
a wild, thatched soul.
I also enjoyed Bob Hicok’s sadly accurate take on being a poet, worth reproducing in full:
The young teller
at the credit union
asked why so many
small checks
from universities?
Because I write
poems I said. Why
haven’t I heard
of you? Because
I write poems
I said.
There’s an interesting collaboration between the aforementioned John Kinsella and his countrywoman Tracy Ryan, blending contemporary comment with echoes of Bronte and Barrett Browning in their ‘Dialogics’, and a fine sequence on the theme of musical performance by American poet Grace Schulman. I also liked the poetry of Stacie Cassarino, Norman Dubie and Laure-Anne Bosselaar.
HAIKU SCOTLAND (#1, SUNRISE ISSUE, FEBRUARY 2005)
Editor, F. Henderson, 2 Elizabeth Gardens, Stoneyburn, EH47 8BP, Scotland
[email protected]
Subs: £4/4; single copy £1. Circulation: building. Payments: None.
Response/Rejection: A month
Editor’s comment: We are interested in haiku, senryu, epigrams, aphorisms and all short poetry forms (nonets, tanka, englyn etc).
Requirements
Send up to eight poems. Email submissions welcome; no attachments as they will not be read. Poetry also welcome from poets beyond Scotland.
Review
This first issue consists of four A4 pages, but haiku being what it is, the publication manages to fit in up to 60 examples of this most concise of poetic forms. Not every poet has a talent for haiku, and some of us shy away from the restraints of shaping our imagery into 17 syllables and three lines, but many of the exponents featured here seem to thrive on the constraints. Frazer Henderson contributes 14 haiku, including a charming sequence set in the city zoo, where we are offered this lovely image:
the zebra’s paddock
a broken fence reveals
- a white horse
The gloriously named Zander Stirling (which may be a pen-name; these haikuists like their masks) is responsible for issue one’s Star Poem, which is a delicately etched thing:
stands of upright larches
two fallen willows
- a family at home.
There are also haikus and associated other short forms by David McKeown, Angus Ogg, Hai Scott and Debbie Macdonald, among others, and there is a section soliciting readers’ views on a featured haiku.
Haiku Scotland left me with the chilled out feeling of one who had just finished a course in Buddhist meditation. Recommended to all you stressed poets out there.
MAGMA (#30, WINTER 2004/5)
Editor, David Boll, 43 Keslake Road, London NW6 6DH
[email protected] www.magmapoetry.com
Subs: £14.50/3; single copy £5.79. Circulation: -
Payments: Free copies, others at discount
Response/Rejection: All work acknowledged within month of receipt. Notice of acceptance/rejection a month to six weeks before publication.
Editor’s comment: We welcome unpublished poems and original artwork by post or email. Contribution deadlines are the end of February, mid-July and the end of October. Poems are considered for one issue only, not held over from one issue to another. Electronic submission is encouraged. The theme for issue 33 (November 2005), which will be edited by Tim Kindberg, is ‘40,733,985 minutes of obscurity’.
Requirements
Up to six poems of average size.
Review
Issue 30 is Magma’s 10th anniversary and there is a celebratory feel to the publication, which was edited by Karen Green. Opening with an interview with Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, the journal includes poetry by Mimi Khalvati, Roddy Lumsden, Mario Petrucci and Ivy Alverez, and showcases the work of Kate Ling, who was Blue Nose Poet of the Year 1999. Ling’s work is simply beautiful; take these lines from ‘To My Daughter’:
and here, in the hiatus
between birth and understanding,
you sleep off your first fight
eyes swollen shut
your ears stuck back where blood
dries in your hair.
There are also fine poems from Pascale Petit, Leanne O’Sullivan, Peter Phillips, Sally Read and Sally Festing, whose ‘Automat’ perfectly captures the sadness of persistent hope:
waiting each day for night
to fall. Happiness
might spring
from the loud dripping dark.
Magma has been a consistently reliable publication, and issue 30 is no exception.
AGENDA (#VOL. 40, NO. 4, AUTUMN/WINTER 2004)
Editor, Patricia McCarthy, The Wheelwrights, Fletching Street, Mayfield, East Sussex, TN20 6TL
[email protected] www.agendapoetry.co.uk
Subs: £28/4 (concession £22); single copy £10 (depending on double or single issue).
Circulation: 1,000+. Payments: Free copies of magazine and variable payment
Response/Rejection: Three months
Editor’s comment: We are seeking well crafted poetry that is urgent, takes risks and comes from the heart (but not sentimental). There are special opportunities for young poets (16 to late 30s) to appear in Broadsheets. Young essayists/reviews are also invited to submit to the magazine, but are advised to contact their editor first with the subject. Agenda specialises in international issues, special issues and general anthology issues.
Requirements
No more than six poems by snail mail with SAE. By email: word document attachment.
Review
This issue is devoted to the theme of ‘translation as metamorphosis’: poems in translation, versions, essays and reviews on the topic of translation. The poetry comes from as far afield as Tunisia, Kurdistan and Persia and as near as Ireland, and helpful short introductions are provided to some of the poets. The one on the work of Russian poet Leonid Aronzon (translations by Richard McKane) demonstrates the important role translation can play in introducing writers to new international audiences, and in preserving their reputation in their homeland. Apparently, some of these translated poems have not yet been printed in their original Russian. Aronzon has the imagination of a surrealist, as the poem ‘Women have roses’ indicates:
Woman have roses in their breasts,
in their shoulders and smiles they rest,
a butterfly of the night flies to them,
entrapped by its mistake.
The classics are well represented: Catullus, Baudelaire, Tsvetaeva and Montale. I was also pleased to see Nigel McLoughlin’s fine translations of some of the 20th century’s most important Irish language poets, Mairtín Ó Direáin and Seán Ó Ríordáin, and one of this century’s most exciting younger poets, Cathal Ó Searcaigh. This comes from his ‘November 1994’:
And if the darkness between us became like the sea,
I’d make a boat of this bed, plunge its bow
through the waves that barge the heart’s quay.
There are comprehensive reviews of recent publications and the magazine concludes with a series of elegies by poets such as Todd Swift, John O’Donnell and John E. Field.
BUZZWORDS ONLINE MAGAZINE
Editor, Rachel Playforth. something pretty@btinternet www.buzzwords.ndo.co.uk
submissions to: [email protected].
Subs: None. Site visits: unknown. Payments: None. Response/Rejection: Two to three weeks for notification; up to three months before publication.
Editor’s comment: We are interested in poetry and short fiction on any subject but prefer shorter, contemporary work.
Requirements
None but short stories should be under 3,000 words in length.
Review
A neatly designed and easily navigable website that features poetry and prose from writers all over the world. Currently, it includes work by 50 poets and prose-writers, which can be accessed either through the author index or by the title. The site cleverly uses frames so that the featured writer’s work appears centre page, with biographical information and links to their other work on the margin, although it was occasionally confusing as to which section I was scrolling up and down.
And as for the poets, I quite enjoyed the simplicity of David Woods’ ‘At her desk’ and the sensual detail of Sadi Ranson-Polizotti’s ‘Daily Ritual’:
The pharmacienne sells me
A balm of chamomile and clover,
One marbled drop for each breast
while Alasdair Cook’s ‘Holders for missing things’ has a certain ghostly quality reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Art of Losing’. There are also good poems by Michael Paul Ladanyi, John Thomson and Jan Imgrund. Buzzwords is that rare commodity, an online journal that exercises quality control on the deluge of email submissions which it undoubtedly receives from around the world.
THE GEORGIA REVIEW (#VOL. LVII, NO 2, SUMMER 2004)
Editor, T.R. Hummer, 012 Gilbert Hall, The University of Georgia,
Athens, GA 30602-9009, USA www.uga.edu/garev
Subs: US$30/Stg£15.68/4; single copy US$9/Stg£4.70. Circulation: 4,000
Payments: US$3/Stg£1.56 per line, prose US$40/Stg£20.92 per printed page; plus one-year subscription and extra copy of the issue in which the author’s work appears
Response/Rejection: Between four to six months; subsequent publication time can vary, but is usually within six months.
Editor’s comment
We seek the very best poetry and fiction, whether by Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners or by little-known and previously unpublished writers. We are looking for creative personal essays and informed, thesis-oriented essays that view their subjects against a broad perspective, provocative work to engage both the intelligent general reader and the specialist. For the most part, we are not interested in scholarly articles.
Requirements
Submissions limited to one story or one essay or three to five poems. We do not accept simultaneous or electronic submissions. Submission guidelines on the website.
Review
This prestigious US literary journal, founded in 1947 by the University of Georgia, has acquired a reputation for publishing top quality work. This issue takes the theme of ‘Poetry and Poecis’ and includes essays by John Kinsella, who asks whether there is such a thing as an Australian Pastoral (there is, but it is about confrontation, recognition, conversation and reconciliation, says Kinsella), Jim Ferris and David Baker, and poetry from, among others, Rita Dove, a former US Poet Laureate, who offers an enchanting definition of herself in the poem ‘Describe Yourself in Three Words or Less’:
I’m not the kind of person who praises
openly, or for profit; I’m not the kind
who will steal a scene unless
I’ve designed it. I’m not a kind at all,
in fact: I’m itchy and pug-willed,
gnarled and wrong-headed,
never amorous but possessing
a wild, thatched soul.
I also enjoyed Bob Hicok’s sadly accurate take on being a poet, worth reproducing in full:
The young teller
at the credit union
asked why so many
small checks
from universities?
Because I write
poems I said. Why
haven’t I heard
of you? Because
I write poems
I said.
There’s an interesting collaboration between the aforementioned John Kinsella and his countrywoman Tracy Ryan, blending contemporary comment with echoes of Bronte and Barrett Browning in their ‘Dialogics’, and a fine sequence on the theme of musical performance by American poet Grace Schulman. I also liked the poetry of Stacie Cassarino, Norman Dubie and Laure-Anne Bosselaar.
HAIKU SCOTLAND (#1, SUNRISE ISSUE, FEBRUARY 2005)
Editor, F. Henderson, 2 Elizabeth Gardens, Stoneyburn, EH47 8BP, Scotland
[email protected]
Subs: £4/4; single copy £1. Circulation: building. Payments: None.
Response/Rejection: A month
Editor’s comment: We are interested in haiku, senryu, epigrams, aphorisms and all short poetry forms (nonets, tanka, englyn etc).
Requirements
Send up to eight poems. Email submissions welcome; no attachments as they will not be read. Poetry also welcome from poets beyond Scotland.
Review
This first issue consists of four A4 pages, but haiku being what it is, the publication manages to fit in up to 60 examples of this most concise of poetic forms. Not every poet has a talent for haiku, and some of us shy away from the restraints of shaping our imagery into 17 syllables and three lines, but many of the exponents featured here seem to thrive on the constraints. Frazer Henderson contributes 14 haiku, including a charming sequence set in the city zoo, where we are offered this lovely image:
the zebra’s paddock
a broken fence reveals
- a white horse
The gloriously named Zander Stirling (which may be a pen-name; these haikuists like their masks) is responsible for issue one’s Star Poem, which is a delicately etched thing:
stands of upright larches
two fallen willows
- a family at home.
There are also haikus and associated other short forms by David McKeown, Angus Ogg, Hai Scott and Debbie Macdonald, among others, and there is a section soliciting readers’ views on a featured haiku.
Haiku Scotland left me with the chilled out feeling of one who had just finished a course in Buddhist meditation. Recommended to all you stressed poets out there.
MAGMA (#30, WINTER 2004/5)
Editor, David Boll, 43 Keslake Road, London NW6 6DH
[email protected] www.magmapoetry.com
Subs: £14.50/3; single copy £5.79. Circulation: -
Payments: Free copies, others at discount
Response/Rejection: All work acknowledged within month of receipt. Notice of acceptance/rejection a month to six weeks before publication.
Editor’s comment: We welcome unpublished poems and original artwork by post or email. Contribution deadlines are the end of February, mid-July and the end of October. Poems are considered for one issue only, not held over from one issue to another. Electronic submission is encouraged. The theme for issue 33 (November 2005), which will be edited by Tim Kindberg, is ‘40,733,985 minutes of obscurity’.
Requirements
Up to six poems of average size.
Review
Issue 30 is Magma’s 10th anniversary and there is a celebratory feel to the publication, which was edited by Karen Green. Opening with an interview with Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, the journal includes poetry by Mimi Khalvati, Roddy Lumsden, Mario Petrucci and Ivy Alverez, and showcases the work of Kate Ling, who was Blue Nose Poet of the Year 1999. Ling’s work is simply beautiful; take these lines from ‘To My Daughter’:
and here, in the hiatus
between birth and understanding,
you sleep off your first fight
eyes swollen shut
your ears stuck back where blood
dries in your hair.
There are also fine poems from Pascale Petit, Leanne O’Sullivan, Peter Phillips, Sally Read and Sally Festing, whose ‘Automat’ perfectly captures the sadness of persistent hope:
waiting each day for night
to fall. Happiness
might spring
from the loud dripping dark.
Magma has been a consistently reliable publication, and issue 30 is no exception.
Page(s) 73-77
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