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

These reviews are written by Andrew Wilson and Janet Fisher, with a bit of extra editorial imput. Thanks to all who stuck their necks on the block for us. Our views are sometimes idiosyncratic, always honest, informed and, of course, utterly unbiassed.

If we’ve missed anyone out, we’re sorry, and we’ll do you next time. We’ve tried to be as accurate as possible with the information, but subs have to rise sometimes (don’t we know it) and addresses change, so check first.

Slow Dancer 58 Rutland Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham, NG2 5DG. 64pp. £6 for 4, published twice a year.

Slow Dancer kicks off the second leg of our thrilling magazine review cup tie. And what a dream of a team the Dancers are. Open, generous, but with a sense of purpose; they have flair and panache and really are a delight to watch in action. They’re up there with the Real Madrids and A C Milans (and elegantly kitted out). Better, think of a New York Liverpool…Issue 24’s a scorcher, hammered home from the [That’s enough of the football metaphor - Ed.].

Rhinoceros 120 Soudan Street, Belfast BT12 6LD. 52pp. £8 for 4.

Pretty much the business, this one. Poems by people you’ve heard of, and new writers too and intelligent and sparky they certainly are. A spare layout, which means lots of white space, but it’s nice paper, and I think they’ve done it on purpose, rather than from a lack of quality submissions. Frivolity aside, it looks good, it reads good and by golly I should seriously consider splashing the cash.

Honest Ulsterman 102 Elm Park Mansions, Park Walk, London SW10 0AP. 82pp. £7 for 4.

Ray ‘Butch’ Wilkins writes: “H.U.’s poetry varies from good to bad, but most of it is solid in the middle of the park. The reviews section goes in hard at full back. This is a side languishing mid-table, and in sore need of a revamped strip and a ground refurbishment.” [Ditto - Ed] H.U. has a jazz column. Nobody’s perfect.

New Welsh Review Department of English, Saint Davids University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, SA48
7ED. 76pp. £12 for 4.

Anyone acquainted with the previous set of mag. reviews will know there’s a stack of high quality literary magazines in Wales. NWR is as good as the rest (though it doesn’t carry a great deal of poetry). “NWR”: there’s a rap group called NWA who “smoke - ie shoot – mother f----rs like it aint no thing” [football again? -Ed.], so I should stress the R when asking in the library.

Poetry London Newsletter Persiflage Press, 26 Clacton Rd. London E17 8AR. 30pp. £4 for 4.

PLN has got that dedicated and skint feel, but don’t let its lived in look put you off, it’s jam packed with good stuff - poems, reviews, and a listings section - and I should think its just about indispensable if you live in London. Dandy.

era The Goldsmith Press, The Corragh, Ireland. 44pp. £2.40 each. Dandy, if you live in Ireland.

Poetry Matters: Journal of Peterloo Poets 2 Kelly Gardens, Calstock, Cornwall PL18 9SA. 48pp. £10 per year.

Dandy if you live in Peterloo. If you know the Peterloo imprint, you know what you’ll be getting. What you don’t know about are the very large photos of the poets. These are a mistake. There are two poems about camels accompanied by two photos of camels. The camels are damn fine poets and I look forward to their first collection; apparently they were signed by Peterloo for a Caravanserai Reading Tour. The eye of this particular needle is that PM does not accept outside contributions.

Chapman 58 - Scotland’s Quality Literary Magazine. 15 Nelson Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6LF. 96pp. £7 for 4.

Dour looking but obviously serious. The poetry averages out at OK. No camels but of course the obligatory seagull poem. The sooner a birdy version of myxomatosis develops and they all drop - like tears, like ash, like premonitions, - out of the sky, the better it will be for English Lit. The reviews section looked authoritative, so I didn’t read it.

Verse Dept. of English, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL. 72pp. £4.50 for 3 issues.

Clued-up but not clever-clever poetry and prose. Wholesome - even the plain packaging - and serious in the way something like Aireings isn’t. Why aren’t there more like this?

Stand Magazine 179 Wingrove Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 9DA. 84pp. £7.95 for 4 issues.

Longstanding and authoritative, if the adverts are anything to go by. Would Cape and Granta advertise in The North? Fiction and poetry, rather staid.

Envoi Pen Ffordd, Newport, Dyfed, Wales SA42 0QT. 42pp. £6 for 3 issues.

Envoi claims that the poems it publishes are “perfect examples of contemporary poetic art”. A high claim indeed. If you take yourself so seriously you have got to be good. Maybe it just has too many on its editorial board. Unadventurous, bland, sometimes incompetent, are phrases that remind me a camel is an animal designed by committee.

X-Calibre 33 Knowle Road, United Kingdom, BS4 2EB [sic]. 100pp. £2.50 per issue.

Don’t get excited - there’s nothing X about this one. Merely ex. This sword should be taken in vein. (The pun is mightier than the words - it says so on the back.)

Moonstone BM Moonstone London WC1N 3XX.
£2.60 for four issues.

Aims to “keep the flag of pagan poetry flying”. Basically a house magazine for the initiated. Incantations rather than poems. Some music, too.

The Frogmore Papers 28 Welby House, Hazellville Road, Highgate, London N19. 22pp. £6/£4 p.a.

If you subscribe you get your name and address printed inside the front cover. Poetry and prose. Cheaply produced and as many haiku as Venice has gondolas. Bit of a desert, plenty of camels, no dates.

Pennine Platform Ingmanthorpe Hall Farm Cottage, Wetherby, West Yorkshire LS22 5EQ. 40pp. £3.60 for 3 issues.

Smart production on a shoestring. Great covers. Poetry and reviews. The poems are a mixture of good and indifferent -- a tendency towards nostalgia, but that’s the age we live in: forward or back, we can’t stop here. Well worth a shot.

Poetry Digest Bradgate Press, 105 Shirley Way, Croydon CR0 8PN. 12pp A4 monthly £6/6 months or £9.50/one year.

Cosy. Informative about festivals and events. Talks of “our poets” and “joining the family”. Workshoppy poems by people with still a long way to go.

Acumen 6 The Mount, Higher Furzeham, Brixham, South Devon TQ5 8QY. 100pp. £4 for 2 issues.

Nicely produced and good reviews section. It answers most of its own questions, but is it engaged in the right dialogue?

Lines Review Edgefield Road, Loanhead, Midlothian EH2O 9SY. 56pp. £7 for 4 issues.

Even older than Stand, but certainly not staid. A Scottish bias, and none the worse for that. Good reviews section and poems of quality. The camels were engrossed, then scoffed the lot.

Writing Women 7 Cavendish Place, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 2NE. 58pp. £6.50 for 3 issues.

No concessions, no ghettos. This is the best you can get - one of the many good things to come out of Newcastle. Poems, fiction and reviews.

Poetry Nottingham 21 Duncombe Close, Nottingham NG3 3PH. 42pp. Annual sub £5.

Overshadowed by that other great organ of Nottingham/New York/Liverpool. New form at is nice but somehow content to be nice; much the same may be said for its poetry, though the Lake Aske competition winners bring some real interest to the issue under review.

Staple School of Humanities, Derbyshire CHE, Mickleover, Derby DE3 5GX. 66pp. £6 for 4 issues.

Excellent value. A sort of Poetry Nottingham plus verve and firmness of editorial purpose. Also prose. Commonsense without being dull. Look not this gift camel in the mouth: subscribe.

Outposts 22 Whitewell Road, Frome, Somerset BA11 4EL. 94pp. £8 for four issues.

Poems and reviews. If this isn’t the longest running independent little magazine…etc. It must be doing something right to survive so long. An oasis in the middle-of-the-road. Talking of which:

Oasis 12 Stevenage Road London SW6 6ES. 12pp. £3 for 6 issues.

Cheaply but attractively produced, Oasis is genuinely international, intellectually vigorous and much larger in impact than its 12pp A5 format would suggest. Oasis and Tenth Decade (and their presses) should be better known. They are doing serious work and getting scant return for it. And, curiously, completely camel-free.