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

Shearsman.
Shearsman Books Ltd., 58 Velwell Road, Exeter EX4 4LD £7.50 p.a. UK,  $12.50 USA.


Shearsman continues its excellent work in the new double-issue format. Poems are intelligent and tend to be reflective, often analytical. There is also a group of translations. Frances Presley has a staccato style in March, On North Hill '...the tides / are always too early / or too late / to swallow / words / nowhere to lay them / on the beach...'  Images of nature are a vehicle for consideration of a human relationship. Lisa Samuels explores spatial relationships in her exploratory sequence Something for you where she anatomises '...where we do or do not say the things / we are...' to the notable image '...wanting to watch // what happens when the will is washed / like blue jeans, tightens up, and holds us / clasply in its fit, our haunches rectified / uneven, like something provided by what we have not given.' The overall emphasis of the collection of poems is on tapping into mystery, admitting the unsettled and the unexplained and the translation of hurts into form, giving a sense of often, uneasy, beauty. Rupert M. Loydell's Sunflower is a energy-filled and effective example of a poem with both horizontal and vertical readings of the text, e.g. 'backwards through art history  sequences or series / silent conversations   more coherent speech / find out information...make up your own mind' which can equally be read consecutively through the first phrase in each line.