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

Poetry Monthly #88 - #99 :
39, Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY.
12 issues £16 A5 stapled 28pp

Poetry Monthly: Martin Holroyd was the former editor of “Poetry Nottingham” and then started up his own magazine, “Poetry Monthly”. I remember thinking at the time that this was a very ambitious thing to attempt as some editors then were struggling to get out three issues a year, let alone twelve. Eight years later the magazine is still going strong and forms one of the cornerstones of the small press scene in Britain today. Editor Martin Holroyd deserves a lot of credit for this.

   Being an experienced writer himself, he has an eye for a good poem and I found many poems I enjoyed in each of these issues. This magazine is no closed shop, Martin encourages the new writer and many a poet has had their first poems published within his magazines. Of course there are experienced writers too, poets like John Adair, Anne Born, Philip Woodrow, Peter Tomlinson, Geoff Clarke and Eamer O'Keeffe who have grown in stature over the years. This from “Alone in the House” by Peter Tomlinson from issue ninety eight –

     “What unknown feelings
     breathe behind your tight-shut door?
     Is it the voice of the people gone
     the thoughts and feelings of long ago?”

     “Or is it the voice
     of new ones waiting to be born
     gently pushing on the door of life?”

Another poem which caught my eye was “Opening the Back Door,”
in issue eighty nine, by Maggie North –

     “This frosty dawn smells
     of washing stiffened on an overnight line.
     At once nothing matters
     for the day depends on this smell
     and the way it arrives with
     a remembrance of somewhere else.”
  
“Poetry Monthly” is an excellent poetry magazine and may it continue for many years to come.