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

The Interpreter’s House was born in Bedfordshire, where to date  we have had just one great writer, John Bunyan.  If you remember, the hero of  Pilgrim’s Progress is advised to go to ‘the house of the Interpreter, at whose door he should knock; and he would show him excellent things, such as would be a help to him in his Journey’.

We hope to publish excellent poems and short stories by writers from Bedfordshire and the neighbouring counties.  Beds, Bucks, Herts, Northants - flat uninteresting places which people pass through on the way to London and which have never been renowned for their cultural life.  Yet, after all, why shouldn’t these counties be a centre of excellence?  Who had ever heard of the Hull poets or the Northern Ireland renaissance fifteen or twenty-five years ago?  In this, our first  issue, we are lucky enough to publish some poets with national reputations, and all future submissions from any source will be carefully considered.  But our aim is to showcase the best writers of our region, and, other things being equal, they will get priority.

A bit more about the title.  When inside the Interpreter’s House things are not always what they seem; ordinary actions have mysterious consequences and hidden meanings jump up on you unawares.  I have had to send back a lot of perfectly competent work because it lacks the third dimension and has no resonance outside itself.  Consider the opening of Liz Faux’s poem, “Thinking of death, I think of fish”.  To me that has the disturbing note, the union of simplicity and mystery that makes writing memorable.  I hope to get more work of this quality from all you writers out there, and that all those interested in the arts of the eastern counties will  read and buy this magazine.  It won’t survive without your support.