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 Smiths Knoll was founded by Roy Blackman and Michael Laskey in 1991. It ran until the final issue came out in late 2012.
The magazine named Smiths Knoll after a lightship - in the North Sea off East Anglia - that is now no longer in service but in 1991 was mentioned repeatedly on the radio on the shipping forecast - free publicity, we thought. The name appealed to us too because a knoll is a small hill, a slightly raised place (poetry magazines don't attract much attention after all) where Smiths, and smiths too, are welcome and belong. It has no apostrophe because, to avoid potential confusion, apostrophes aren't permitted on Admiralty charts.
Roy Blackman died in 2002, just after the publication of issue 29. The magazine was then edited by Michael Laskey and Joanna Cutts, with help from Dean Parkin on marketing and development.
What was special about Smiths Knoll?
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no cliques, always open to new contributors: typically of the 50 poets represented in any issue, 20 would be appearing in the magazine for the first time
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a quick turnaround time for mss: generally under a fortnight and often much faster
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willingness to offer constructive feedback on submissions that interest us
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the magazine's been nurturing promising new poets for over ten years: published early work by Colette Bryce, Mandy Coe, Amanda Dalton, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Judy Gahagan, Tobias Hill, Mario Petrucci, Neil Rollinson, Jean Sprackland, Andrew Waterhouse, Anthony Wilson, Glyn Wright and Cliff Yates, among many others
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no stockpiling: accepted work appears promptly, in the next issue or the one following
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payment on publication at the rate of £20 per poem
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high production values, carefully proofed, each poem on its own page, never crammed in
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annual workshop weekends for subscribers
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Michael Laskey
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