Reviews
Moonstone #95:
CH Unit 2 Commercial Courtyard, Settle, BD24 9RH 4 issues £7.50 A5 26pp
Osiris #57 and #58:
PO Box 297, Old Deerfield, Massachusetts 01342, USA. ISSN 0095-019X $16 or €14 for 2 issues A5 48pp
Pennine Platform #55 and #56:
Frizingley hall, Frizinghall Road, Bradford, BD9 4LD £4 plus 50p postage or 2 issues £8.50 A5 60pp www.pennineplatform.co.uk
Reach #87:
PO Box 109, Portishead, Bristol, BS20 7ZJ. ISSN 1461-112 £3.50 A5 102pp www.bluechrome.co.uk/reach
Shearsman #58, #59, #60:
Shearsman Books, 58 Velwell Road, Exeter, EX4 4LD £2.50 or 4 issues £7 A5 36pp(#58) and 32pp www.shearsman.com
Tremblestone #4:
Stowford House, 43 Seymour Avenue, St. Judes, Plymouth, PL4 8RB ISSN 1463-9181 £4 or 3 issues £10 or 6 issues £18 A5 84pp
Do poetry magazines offer value for money? This question is prompted by the varying production standards evident in these particular magazines. Whilst this is not the place to go into all the financial ramifications of poetry magazine publishing, it can be fairly said that neither publishers nor poets seem to make anything out of them. However we live in a consumer / materialistic society and poetry magazines, on a certain level, can be viewed as products that are subject to the same market forces as any other product.
Before discussing the actual poetry in these magazines, a brief look at them shows large differences in physical quality. Moonstone is a slim volume in which the text appears to have been produced on a typewriter in a variety of typefaces. The pages appear to be photocopied or Xeroxed and stapled, with a single staple, into a thin card cover decorated with rather plain artwork. Shearsman, with more pages than Moonstone, presents equally slim volumes due to thinner paper (this is also used for the cover). If you can call a blob of drab colour artwork then the artwork for Shearsman is totally un-enticing. At least Shearsman, and all the magazines except Moonstone, appears to have used a proper desktop publishing package or professional typesetting. Pennine Platform is more robust in as much as its paper feels thicker and the cover, decorated with pen and ink sketches, is made of thin card. Reach, Tremblestone and Osiris all have better quality covers with decent artwork and are glued rather than stapled. Some purists may argue that it is the poetry inside that matters but if the poetry inside is good poetry then I will want to read it for many years to come. Some of these poetry magazines are not robust enough to last long on anyone's bookshelf.
So what of the contents, how good are the poems?
Moonstone contains a couple of decent pieces from Idris Caffrey, a fine lament for the degradation of Bath by Deborah Tyler-Bennett, five haiku (which is four too many), and the expansive final line of Flash by Geoff Stevens - that stretches as far as the eye can't see. The rest of the poems are no more than adequate and the information pages are too cramped to read easily.
Shearsman has a good reputation. Most of the poets were new to me and I was impressed by the overall standard. About a month after publication the magazine is available online and the online version contains reviews that do not appear in the printed version. These volumes contained work from several overseas contributors which helps give the magazine a less parochial feel than some other British magazines. An example of how poetry is supposed to work, instead of the stilted magazine fillers that proliferate these days, comes from On Great South Bay by Mark Weiss :-
All day the night-chill
nestles beneath the eaves of the house
waiting for darkness.
Pennine Platform also has something of a reputation, again this is largely deserved. There is a short editorial and a few book reviews. Amongst the good work in these issues were pieces from Hans Ostrom, Pauline Kirk, John Arnold, and a brilliant translation by Thomas Clark of a few lines of Dante Aligheri into a Scots dialect. The magazine, despite some overseas contributors, retains a slightly Northern English feel.
Reach is a warm and friendly magazine, the editors seem to treat contributors like family and friends. Being a natural outsider this seemed a little cloying to me. The general level of work tends more to the homely and everyday. This being the November issue, there were naturally several poems with Armistice Day and the futility of war. These were offset (complimented?) by K V Skene's perfectly vicious I Want This To Hurt. Eamer O'Keefe's stuttering rhythm in Arctic Summer captures the bustle of a short growing season but misses the languidity of 24 hour daylight. In contrast to virtually every other magazine Reach uses the first half of the issue for reviews, letters and other information. The poetry is shunted to the back almost as an afterthought. The letter section needs drastic pruning as it is little more than a series of voting slips for the most popular poem from the previous issue.
Tremblestone takes quite a step into left-field. This is modern poetry that demands more than a little work from the reader. Only eleven poets are featured but this allows for slightly longer pieces, and two poets, Martin Anderson and Richard Burns, have 5 pieces each. This allows the reader to get a better feel for each poet's work. Perhaps the best adjective to use here is assured, as the poets say what they mean in a way that lets the reader understand the poets' point of view, even if the reader does not agree with it. The perfect example of this being John Daniel's EOKA Museum, Nicosia, Cyrus. Tremblestone would appear to be an annual affair, this issue is dated August 2004, next issue due August 2005. About a quarter of the magazine is taken up with reviews but these are fairly in-depth due to the generous space afforded them.
Osiris is arguably the best of these magazines. Osiris is an American magazine that draws contributions from the USA, Canada, Europe, and a few other world-wide areas. Be warned not all the poems are printed in English. É Terra La Vita by Flavio Ermini is printed in Italian and French. This is no great problem as
a un passo dalle cose non ha
parola chi é inadatto alla vita - soltanto la sabbia e
la lingua
provengono da un unico luogo
looks and sounds so good that understand is not strictly necessary. Readers will have to put some effort into Osiris if they are to get the best out of it. The reward comes from poets such as Barry Ballard who in The Prognosis gives lines such as
She draws her fingers across the sutures
of rain rippling over Michigan landscapes.
In conclusion, when considering what you get for your money, poetry magazines are reasonable value. Some unfortunately are doomed to a shorter shelf-life than their contents deserve. This is to be regretted but perhaps the only way to get better quality magazines is to pay more for them.
Page(s) 37-38
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