No Smoke Without Fire
some poetry magazines reviewed
The Burning Bush 8-11 Michael S. Begnal [email protected], A5, £4 each/final copy is free).
Issue 11 is the final Burning Bush. Enquiries should be addressed to the editor at the email address given above.
The paradigm at the heart of this publication stretched from realism to good old fashioned romanticism. Temporally, the paradigm ranged from the now of today to the now of the past, casting a backwards glance at Modernism. Spatially, The Burning Bush came out of Ireland and - as far as I can recall - every issue included some poetry in Irish. Thus there was also a national/international paradigm at work. They did the sublime to the ridiculous as well: "'Roy Orbison calls from a Burning Bush' / Portions of sense occur, but soon get lost…" Pat Jourdan (from At the reading, BB 8) All this meant the magazine had a lively instability which was, in effect, its style.
Fire 21 Jeremy Hilton (Field Cottage, Old White Hill, Tackley, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, OX5 3AB, 191pp/A5, £4 each/£7 for 3). www.poetical.org
I would say that Fire is like Envoi on acid, but I won't because it wouldn't be true. Fire is more austere and more modern. This issue begins with several pages of tribute to Albert Huffstickler - a poet from Texas who clearly inspired a lot of people. His poem Trial by Fire documents a symbolic process of hope which leads first to "a place… of dry bones and anguish" and ends with a chance "to forge a star / out of your living breath." But there are bones all over the place:
The layers shed off me in sheets like sunburnt skin
Until I see the meat and bones beneath
Wrapped in green sheepskin
Under a damp winter sky
Lucy Ashman, from Daffodils
Much of the poetry has an austere feeling, poetic language stripped down to the bone. Chloe Meakin describes herself "…all over the floor in a private room. / Head hot in my hands, throbbing and disturbed. // My brain is in pain with the dangerous things I may have done." She ends her poem Nothing Important Happened Today with the line: "I am skin and soft organs, defending the bone."
This issue of Fire concludes with the opening five sections of Andrew Duncan's Anglophilia - a Romance of the Docks. Duncan constructs an unofficial history of the making of the myth of England in pre second world war Britain, outing a sense of what existed behind Stephen Tallents' documentary evocations of "the good life". The introduction refers to these in terms of nonist false landscapes. In reference to Q-ships - antisubmarine ships disguised as "helpless merchantmen" - Duncan presents England as a Q-landscape.
He marshals a yard from the streets of Bolton
picks the ones who look most
workerly, takes their names
to form a child's view of authenticity
from part three, Putting England on film
The poem has been serialised in Fire 22-24. It would be worth collecting those issues for the Andrew Duncan representations of representations alone.
Global Tapestry Journal 24 & 25 Dave Cunliffe (Spring Bank, Longsite Road, Copster Green, Blackburn, BB1 9EU, 56pp/A5, £2.40 each/£9 for 4 cheques payable to 'D.A. & R. Cunliffe').
GTJ is radical in the creatively permissive sense, rather than in the corrective revolutionary. Those possessed by a repressive ideology will see red (or whatever) when they scan the pages of issue 24. There are some self consciously exploitative photos of a woman reading a Bukowski book in the buff (Michael Kelly makes voyeurism the object of his voyeurism, which is knowing and ironic) and Ian Ayres' poem Transvestite contains explicit confessions. Permissive society re-enactments. A photo of Iain Sinclair makes him look like an Eastern Blok secret policemen, whilst the drawing of Jim Burns would make him an easy winner of the Michael Cain Look-a-Like Sketch Competition:
It's the way we get through life,
telling ourselves we know best
and nothing is ever the same,
but denying that we're to blame.
from Things ain't what they used to be
Wise words from Jim Burns - he's come a long way since his Alfie days. Given that it's a Chris Torrance 60th Yearly Incarnation Special Edition and I haven't even mentioned him, well you can see how hot this issue is. Issue 25 includes a Kaviraj George Dowden celebration - "Shiva in action!" - a 'world turned right side up' big bearded beatnik with a vision that is utopian, but you couldn't imagine it spawning death camps: "no drugged and malleable population in silly bliss but everyone in deep intelligent bliss!" (from The Eternities of Shiva). Also poems from Chris Torrance, Steve Sneyd, Patricia Pogson, Andrew Darlington and others… The Jefferson Chairlift generation for sure but they still have visions, write poems and enjoy dressing-up games. Shiva in action!
Krax 39 Andy Robson (63 Dixon Lane, Leeds, LS12 4RR, 72pp/A5, £3.50 each cheques payable to 'A. Robson').
Krax takes a generally good humoured view of life and its difficulties. A typical Krax poet being sceptical but not about to get in a strop about it. There are black & white illustrations, an author photo (happily only one) and reviews too. Rendered with a lightness of touch, the humour works to ironic effect:
Silence is now available
in supermarkets and wholefood shops:
bottled in pale blue and green,
and occasionally containing a few
carefully chosen additives, such as
the sounds of birdsong or waves.
Pippa Meek, from SHHH
Sometimes the ideas aren't quite so neat, or so well presented. I recall getting a lift once from a man who told me he was known as 'the pissy poet' by his mates. I'm not saying Frank Lee is that man, but when I read "When I first met Matilda, I bloody nigh killed her…" that lorry driver from long ago drifted back into my mind. So much artless jollity can become reminiscent of the Royston Vasey stand up comic. But Krax also publishes articles. This issue contains Valleys of the Psyche by 'AR'. It's an odd piece about a talk by Gwyneth Lewis about depression and diet. I wonder if Krax should include more features on depression? Forget Wendy Cope and stock up with rhubarb blancmange instead.
Oasis 106-110 Ian Robinson & Yann Lovelock (32pp/A5, £2.50 each/£6 for 4).
Sadly, Ian Robinson has died. It seems that the magazine and press are now defunct. Email me on [email protected] and I'll clarify this if I can.
Issue 106 contains writing from Lee Harwood, Simon Smith, Kelvin Corcoran, Andrea Moorhead, John Ash, Robert Sheppard, August Kleinzahler and Roselle Angwin. 'How to deal with pointlessness' might be the theme of this issue, which starts with a walk in the mountains with Lee Harwood and ends in the west country where kisses are "unfisted" with (or possibly from) Roselle Angwin. Robert Sheppard's obsessive-compulsive filing system of surreal texts takes you into an opposite, subjective extreme.
Issue 107 opens with a long poem by Charles Hadfield that never quite confronts an implied subject matter; fear, the arrest of dissidents in China, impotency in the face of death. The poem is called Close Call. "My daughter slides onto / my knee asking awkward / questions as I write…" She emphasises the dilemma of the poem. "she questions whether my words / mean what they say…" The question creates a tension which the poem holds throughout.
Oasis 108 is dedicated to the memory of Richard Caddel. I think it likely that he would have enjoyed the idea of his memorial issue opening with this: "Today I learned Frank O'Hara was really / the child of an incestuous South Carolina / coupling. I learned it from my pet llama…" (from The Truth About Frank O'Hara, by Tom Whalen). Tinto by Phil Simmons has a cinematic quality, is knot-worked from various strands and is subtly plotted, and there's poignant writing from Richard Caddel too.
Issue 109 includes poetry from Estill Pollock:
Lithuania patriots are convinced
The geographical centre of Europe is located
Precisely on this unassuming hill in Lithuania
A stone marks the spot
Only 15 miles from glittering Vilnius
I think this is the centre, she says
After all, they didn't just think it up
One day we'll understand what this is worth
…
from The Interpretation of Dreams (for Irina)
And by reading the quote you have just become a part of the process. It spreads from the centre to the periphery.
Issue 110 has so much good poetry it's hard to know where to start. There are textured lyrical abstractions from Carrie Etter on the theme or process of love spells - "Descent might be merely the postponement of ascent // descent displacement of a return, / the abrupt shudder back into the self…" (from Subterfuge for the Unrequitable) - and this six page happening is followed by the beautifully sombre Three Sections from 'The School Teacher's Wife' by Deborah Moffatt which feels like a myth, something grown over time in a landscape rather than something written by an individual - disturbing, erotic and loaded with mute violence - it is a physically affective lyric:
As we lay hidden in the trees, here where one teal
Lies dead, blood running from the neck -
Speak to me, she said, undressing.
The curve of her breast, the dark hollow
Between her legs - groping in the shadows,
Another teal here; I only know it by the feel
…
Space does not allow for quotes from Tessa Ransford's translations of the poetry of Wulf Kirsten and Thomas Rosenlöcher, nor for any mention of Rupert Mallin's Two Pavement Poems - which are made from bits of text the poet found on the ground - nor for the Unthinkable Thoughts of Alan Baker.
Other Poetry 24 Various (Michael Standen, 29 Western Hill, Durham, DH1 4RL, 96pp/A5, £4.50 each/£13 for 3). www.otherpoetry.com
Other Poetry comes perfect bound and with a full colour cover. It's printed on quality paper and the card is substantial enough not to curl up. As for the contents, well there's variety, depth and theme. If there's Mam and Dad, there is also global market, recalcitrant idealism and primal dream.
Capillary branches of trees,
Wood veins,
A scientists model,
The blood flow of brains.
Ian O'Brien, from Generator
"A man in a vest leans against the wall / cleaning fowl, and beside the little museum / where the pickled lungs of children / are thread with traces of ore / we kneel in Chapel Wood and lick / the bark of her favourite oak." (Joan Johnston, from Country Girls). Somehow morbid anatomy and tree have merged in a physical pantheism, or something similar. There are also book reviews and they are interesting and varied too.
Poetry Express James Ferguson (Survivors' Poetry, Diorama Arts Centre, 34 Osnaburgh Street, London, NW1 3ND, 18pp/A4, unpriced). [email protected]
Poetry Express is a happy mix of newsletter and literary magazine for Survivors' Poetry, a group set up by people who have experienced mental health problems and the interventions of mental health and social care providers. The magazine has a very upbeat feel and that's a result of the contents rather than the style. That's not to criticise the layout and production - the plain style works very well and the change from glossy to ordinary paper doesn't count as a loss. The involvement of Simmon Jenner - editor of Eratica magazine - adds to the zest. There are several pages of poetry and some scholarly reviews. The range of styles is stimulating and the prose creates a comfortable context within which the poetry sits. Jenner's review of Geoffrey Hill's The Orchards of Syon - "this iron lung of a book" - certainly helped me out. This quote could almost be a continuation of a debate about the Orchards:
Semantics is a shady business:
Shades of meaning, shades of shade.
In the shady world of madness
It's shadiness which must be weighed.
William Myddelton, from Semantic Exercises
This magazine has come on some and so has the world of Survivors' Poetry. There are lots of events at the Diorama Arts Centre and talk of a poetry bus that might plot out the geography of Survivors' Poetry in the rest of the country. The absence of a price is confusing, there's no explanation as to what this means, but sending an email should clear up the mystery.
Poetry Quarterly Review 20, Derrick Woolf & Tilla Brading (Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somerset, TA5 1NQ,30pp/A4, £2 each/£7 for 4).
PQR20 is a Focus on Translation special, with reviews by Nicholas Midgeley, Gordon Wardman, Anne Born, Yann Lovelock, Giovanni Malito and PQR Reviews Editor Tilla Brading. This issue also contains some website reviews and a batch of reviews by Keith Jebb who teeters on the edge of meaning whilst reviewing the works of Caroline Bergvall, Sheila E. Murphy, Adrian Clarke and Johan de Wit. There are shoals of reviews by a posse of other small press poets too and an obituary for Tony Charles who was published by Odyssey Poets (the same parish responsible for PQR) and edited Headlock magazine and small press. The PQR magazine reviews section has undergone a timely makeover and the grid that once turned reviewing into a checklist has gone. Nowadays they just do short appraisals of the magazines. Elsewhere, the feature poet is John Hall, who contributes a lone knower's disavowals, which is an A3 poster made up of three rows of five graphical/typographical constructs that you could sketch more easily than quote.
RAW NerVZ IX:2 Dorothy Howard (67 rue Court, Gatineau (QC), Canada, J9H 4M1, 52pp/A5(ish), US$7 each/US$26 for 4).
I have imagined a Haiku Utopia and then I woke up. Small pieces of my dream kept coming back to me. I thought if cars could run on haiku there'd be no more wars. Then there was the advertising hoarding beside a derelict refinery, it said DRINK HAIKU. If you could there'd be no more conflict over water. Hydroelectric haiku could power your TV and your fridge; I have seen this. No need for wind farms. We'd hug each other and say our haiku prayers at night. Nuclear waste would be a thing of the past. That's my dream. Some day a use will be found for haiku - until then they just keep accumulating - these moments of eternity. Gibberish thoughts. New York accounts for more haiku than the whole of Africa and yet this isn't enough, they just keep on writing more. Haiku imperialism. A Hollywood movie is in production that tells the story of how American pioneers invented the haiku. Given the weird way nationalisms work, the Japanese could end up claiming that all the haiku in the world belong to them and then demand their return. Then, the Haiku Wars. That's probably what will happen if a use ever gets found for these shards of subjectivity. A Haiku Republic, that's what they need. A homeland for people with short poetic attention spans. It doesn't exist, but it will. There are haiku fundamentalists out there right now planning their campaign. If you want to change the world with haiku you should sign up now and head for the training camp. "Press F7 / child showing his grandma / how to exit" (Carla Sari) "against a sunlit log / the half moon / of a heron's shadow" (Dina Cox).
Shearsman 52-58 Tony Frazer (58 Velwell Road, Exeter, EX4 4LD, 32pp/A5, £2.50 each, payable to Shearsman Books). www.shearsman.com
Reviewing poetry magazines is difficult and dangerous work, but when it comes to Shearsman I know I have more strange beasts to deal with than in most paginated landscapes. This is a distinct region. "It sits as if to squat below a certain level / small squares of fields between / dry stone walls…" (Ian Davidson, from Five Poems from 'Jetski'/ issue 52).
In issue 53 Richard Burns recounts, "We walked around the hill brow, and stumbled upon a temple. Tucked / into a rock-fold and perched on its own outcrop on the far side of the / valley. Down we stumbled…" (from Nine Codas). And that's the thing with Shearsman, you don't know what's around the next corner, but it is usually well chosen. It's a magazine with an airy, assured atmosphere. From issue 54, this from Aidan Semmens: "How did the place first / become holy? Home to / Shalem, shrine of Baal, / a threshing floor / on the mountain." (from How Doth the City Sit Solitary). Frances Presley, in issue 55, puts it this way:
She was clothed with cords
and t-ties
twisting out the sweating
minor volcanic
in the sewers of the ruins
the daughter-house
of the rere dorter
harebells in the runis
from Othery Cope
Issue 56 contains the marvellous (St.) Hildegard von Bingen's Visions by Catherine Daly: "When a woman makes love with a man, / delightful heat communicates that delight (salt) / and summons semen." Hildegard wrote well of love. Issue 56 also contains work from (amongst others) Kelvin Corcoran:
Somewhere believe or singing her
a field god rises, hungry,
close to the ground, eyes like smoke,
singing her those particles wake.
They say that they say
that sometimes she's seen in the neighbourhood.
from Against Purity
"Now it ends, the old debate / on origins for lyric verse. / No instruments. Voice frozen. / The soloist suspended / in a web of state." (Erling Friis-Baastad, from Relevance, Shearsman 57). Issue 58 contains entertaining writing by Nancy Kuhl and Marrianne Morris; Estil Pollock and, amongst others, Trevor Joyce: "In a trice / power slips / the grasp; / armed men / defile / the grave. // Now loyalty's / exemplars / are all dead, / tears cancel face." (from 4 Poems from the Chinese of Ruan Pi).
Smoke 51-53 Dave Calder & Dave Ward (Windows, Liver House, 96 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4HY, 20pp/A5, 80p each/£4 for 5). www.windowsproject.demon.co.uk
Smoke is full of stories - with poems about the oddness of family members often featuring - and the surrealism of everyday life.
It smells of burning gorse, vanilla
and of heat. It makes a distant noise
the clatter of bone on air.
Suzanne Batty, from This Horse
The precisely said and the fortuitous are often combined in these pages. Smoke contains poems from 'small press stalwarts' such as Lyn Moir, Robbert Sheppard, Paul Donnelly, et al. and poets I have never heard of. Issue 52 is illustrated by Alice Lenkiewicz - they all have artwork but hers is the best.
the text 17 Keith Jafrate (The Word Hoard, The Media Centre,
7 Northumberland Street, Huddersfield, HD1 1RL, 29pp/A4, back issues £2.50 each/£12 for 6). www.wordhoard.co.uk
Keith Jafrate has an open mind about writing and the format of the text reflects this. The pages come loose in an envelope. This can seem a bit odd if you're used to the standard A5 poetry magazine, but you get used to it. It is an easy to read format, and the comfort is aided by the layout and typography.
This issue includes work from Steve Littlejohn, Robert Furze, Anthony Cropper and a collaboration involving Douglas Barbour & Sheila E. Murphy. Steve Littlejohn's text is a two chapter extract from My Favourite Dress. This engaging tale revolves around the life and imagination of a documentary film maker, or possibly art film maker, and his attempts at getting on with the DIY and shooting a scene for a film that has something to do with the theft of a dog. "The common was sewn onto the edge of town like a pocket on a tracksuit. I parked roughly where the dognappers had and got myself into character." And so the disaster unfolds. The two Robert Furze poems - storm murmur and what the stone became are more abstract than his Keep Walking (Spout, 2000 - reviewed in 10th Muse 12). Keep Walking has the water tower as axis and object and however the writing is done, it is read with the water tower in mind. You never get lost in because you can always see the water tower. These poems have the same robustness but lack the landmark. You become your own water tower.
(a hole in the ground
the locals call
a hole in the ground)
from storm murmur
The Barbour & Murphy collaboration contains some nice phrases and there is a third author called &. The supporting comments that appear with the poem explain this - "the process brings forth a different creator". In this analysis, & becomes a symbol for the poet and/or the reader, that which links and breaks things (like Veronica Forrest-Thompson's hyphen).
placing place where life is
tuned to be the surface
over other surfaces until
the outermost layers begin
to touch and let go
tension after tension
from Section 13
Anthony Cropper's Automat - another novel extract - is set in the nightmare world of couples. The narrator is losing his grip on who's who. Sal, Elaine and Paula merge into each other, or appear in the wrong temporal zone. It's all rendered in a detached tone. "Last night Bob and Paula came over for some food. They were meant to be here in the afternoon, but they were having the builders round. So they didn't arrive till late, not long after the kid was in bed. It's a pity we missed him, said Paula, just after she handed Elaine a bottle of red. Sal always asks them to stay over, there's the spare room at the top, she says. But they haven't stayed, not once. Paula never wants to." These are relationships that automatically spawn a 'third partner'. Spooky. The act of reading the text is itself a collaboration. The unbound nature of this magazine that is not a magazine means that a 'second reader' does tend to materialise in the room. But at least you can give them a handful of pages so they don't have to read over your shoulder. Also, you can get them to do the decorating. There are good big bits of text in here and no 40 line poems at all.
Tremblestone 3 Kenny Knight (Stowford House, 43 Seymour Avenue,
St. Judes, Plymouth, PL4 8RB, 96pp/A5, £4 each/£10 for three, payable to Tremblestone).
It isn't necessarily that I think the poetry in Tremblestone 3 is all good - it sometimes isn't - but there is depth in the Tremblestone product. I think it's to do with the personnel. Historically, Plymouth is the poetry capital of the Plymouth area and the cultural gravity associated with that has generated odd individuals with an interest in poetry. In this cultural machine there's Tim Allen with his Marxian dialectic and no nonsense nonsense, there's Norman Jope who splits his time between Plymouth and Posterity and Steve Spence - who must surely start a magazine of his own - and others such as philip kuhn, Huw Knoyle and Dee Marshall. I got a hit off those. And the Giles Goodland poem was bound to go down well in my fallen-over-landscape world:
Walking to school, driving to work,
One is more in danger from
Sudden epiphany than from traffic.
from Poetry as Geography
I liked the review of 10th Muse too, it's by Alice Domingo. Oh Alice, thank you. That's a ME ME ME statement of course but I get very little out of what I do, for obvious reasons.
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