Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Welcome to iota 61. We feel we’re settling into the job a little now – and once again we hope to have offered an exciting mix of good poetry. Thanks to all who have offered words of encouragement, support and constructive criticism so far. Editing in a vacuum is fairly pointless and it really does help us to know what you think. Some of your comments are posted on the iota website. If you do write to us but prefer not to have your thoughts available  for general consumption, please say so in your letter.

A lot of people asked about the cover photographs we’ve used so far, and some felt the source should have been attributed. OK: iota 59 used a photograph taken on the Greek island of Andros by Janet in 1986, and the photo for iota 60 was of a busker in Munich in 1984, taken by Bob. The photo for this issue is another of Bob’s - from Borrowdale in the Lake District in 1984 or 1985. Those years, along with too many others, have become a little vague!

Full submission guidelines for iota can be found on the website, but briefly: please don’t send us simultaneous submissions, please send a stamped, addressed envelope for reply – we don’t mind paying for postal replies to the occasional naïve person, but if everyone did it iota would fold very quickly – and try to send a covering letter that lists the poems. Someone asked recently about the numbers of poems we publish compared to the number submitted. Accordingly,  I did some rapid maths – and in the last quarter we read around 900 poems from more than 200 poets. (Now if we had 200 subscribers we would be very happy editors indeed, but that’s another matter!) Finally, several people have asked 2 about financial remuneration for poems. Sorry, we can’t do that for iota or our anthologies, though poets whose collections we publish are paid an advance and royalties. For the record, neither of us takes any payment from Ragged Raven or iota. The cold fact is that poetry is a very hard sell.

Next an admission of idiocy – in iota 60 Bob glibly praised Barbara Daniels for an interesting switch of styles in his appreciation of the American mag, Coal City Review. It will surprise few that in the whole of Britain and the United States there are (at least) two poets called Barbara Daniels writing enjoyable poetry. The Barbara Daniels whose work is extensively published in Britain, including her new Poetry Monthly pamphlet Camera Obscura, lives in Wales. The one in Coal City Review is believed to be somewhere in Vermont.

Our next Ragged Raven anthology Saturday Night Desperate will be released in March – advance orders extremely welcome! – followed by a collection from Tony Petch in June. Tony’s poem Blue begins this edition of iota. We’re really excited to be putting together a collection of his work. He’s been writing for a long time and his poetry deserves to be seen. News of further collections will follow in due course. Tony, John Robinson (whose book the cook’s wedding was the first of our individual collections) and Bob Mee read under the Ragged Raven banner at the Humber Mouth Literary Festival in November. Leaflets advertising the July poetry weekend in Oxford are enclosed. We will certainly be taking part in that.

Back to iota 60: the most popular poems were those by John Robinson, Dave Bryan, Terry Quinn, Janice Fixter and Michael Kriesel.

We are launching an annual iota competition, which will be free to subscribers - please see box below for details. We hope you will enter. Finally, thanks to everyone who subscribes to iota. Without you, this couldn’t happen. Please, if you enjoy what we’re doing, take out a subscription or buy one for a friend. Similarly, details of Ragged Raven publications are at the back of iota after the reviews section.