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

So you’ve started to write poetry. You may have joined a writing group and received some positive critical feedback on your work. You may even have had one or two poems published in magazines. At this point you might be cautiously wondering if one day you might have a collection published. How exactly this might come about is, however, one of the more obscure questions in the poetry world. Just how do editors of publishing house lists operate?

The three editors who spoke to Urban Fox represent a cross-section of those shadowy types responsible for selecting new poetry collections. Christopher Reid has responsibility for around twenty new titles per year, whilst Robin Robertson publishes somewhere between four and eight, and Don Paterson around four. Reid and Robertson have been at this for some time: Reid six years, Robertson with Cape and before that other publishers, over twelve years: Paterson is the new boy of the bunch having just started this year and never having done it before. Paterson has not been slow out of the blocks, however. He already has Arvon Prize winner Paul Farley in the pipeline and, coincidentally, has published Robertson himself (A Painted Field) whilst Reid publishes Paterson (God’s Gift to Women); Reid is also published by Faber himself (Expanded Universes). There’s nothing sinister in all this; what it does highlight is that the poetry world at the level of those with collections currently on the bookshelves is a very small one indeed. All three editors are highly respected contemporary poets in their own right who can be expected to know their way round the poetry scene.

Firstly, how do editors acquire new work to look at?

Robin Robertson. I receive about 60-70 unsolicited scripts a week and three or four a week from agents. Almost all of this reaps no immediate reward. I do look at magazines as much as I’m able. I try go to the National Poetry Library at least once a month. I find more new work through contacts, mostly other writers - not just the writers I publish. They know writing better than anybody else and it can be a much more exciting and organic way to publish books.

Don Paterson. I acquire poetry in different ways. People just send them in on spec, or I get them through contacts. Looking through magazines is not so helpful. Whilst you can tell if someone can write straight away on the basis of a single poem, to identify real talent needs a decent sample: around six to ten poems, I’d say.

What is the process that you go through when you look at a manuscript?

Christopher Reid. I look for work which is saying things in a new way. Also with some sort of consciousness of the history of poetry. It doesn’t need to be the same history in each case, each poet chooses his or her own history that they are attuned with. It is the sense of belonging to some tradition. So I look for some sort of knowledge of the past, but more importantly presenting things in a different way to how it’s been done in the past.

RR I just don’t want to read something I’ve read before. I’m very wary of analysing any critical approach because it shouldn’t be intellectualised I have because to me it’s an entirely visceral thing. I read so much that’s so bad, I worry about becoming jaded. The good stuff, when it does come, and it comes very rarely, does have that kind of powerfully visceral effect; you just know if it’s great. So, I’m looking for something that’s original but that also takes into account what’s been written before, that betrays a knowledge of contemporary, twentieth century poetry. I’m looking for something that thrills and excites me.

DP I’m looking to do two things. First to be true to my own tastes but, at the same time, not to make the list in one’s own image, which has happened to some lists in the past. I think you have to take a punter’s eye view and forget you’re an editor and see if it works for you first.

How much, if at all, does the idea of marketing come into it? Publishing houses are, after all commercial enterprises.

CR I’ve not yet had any problems convincing the firm to take on a poet who hasn’t yet sold very well, they’re patient with me. Some poets obviously sell better than others. Faber is aware of this, there’s a certain amount of trust put in me. I do think about this, inasmuch as if a poet sells well I’m delighted, if they don’t sell well I’m disappointed. But although that’s not the first criterion, I do like my judgements to be endorsed by the wider public. In the cases of those poets who have started slowly, I hope that eventually they catch on. The firm has a long history in publishing poetry and has seen that things sometimes take decades to grow and for the public to catch on.

DP This comes hard on the heels of the primary considerations. You would be encouraged by the idea that the poet would take some sort of parental interest in their own work in terms of readings and so on. On the other hand, I respect those people who feel that they are not interested in that, that the poems on their own are the work; there are those people who seem to be more enamoured with the idea of being a poet than writing poetry.

RR If the editor believes in something, that energy and commitment passes through to the next stage: to the sales department, to publicity. If I can keep that going all the way through to publication, then that’s my job done. If I were to publish something to fill some sort of gap in the market, or I’m trying to second-guess what somebody else might like, then I’d be lost; that’s just a cynical approach which I couldn’t take. I’ve published enough books to know that if you just trust your own judgement then, time and time again, those that are really good rise out of the mire.

You yourself are a practising poet. Do you think that to do your job that’s a necessary qualification?

CR No, I don’t. I think it could be done by anybody who understands poetry; I don’t think this is a special right of poets. I think possibly it may, however, help some of my poets, when I’m giving them critical notes. Because they understand the angle from which it’s coming, because they know my work, that gives us a basis of common understanding. But I think that anybody could make the sort of critical remarks I make to a poet.

RR No, I don’t. Anybody who is an intelligent and sensitive reader. I’m a fiction editor, but I don’t write fiction. It’s also a question of confidence; people can be slightly unnerved by poetry. But if you care about language and understand poetry, it doesn’t matter if you don’t write the stuff.

DP I think that by and large it needs to be, with the odd exception. You do need to know the structure of a poem. If you took, say, a number of novelists, highly literate people, and asked them for a list of their favourite poets, it would be a very different list from a poet’s - and probably for the wrong reasons when it comes to selecting new work.

The critical editing of manuscripts, the editing process, what kind of contribution do you think that makes?

CR I think the main point of it is that I provide the poet with his or her first really critical reading of a manuscript in its entirety. My job is to see the patterns, see the faults. There are some general artistic considerations: you don’t want to strike the same note too often, for example.

What do you think is the most important thing that you have to do?

CR To be able to see what’s good when it comes from an unexpected angle. In other words, not to be set in my ways but to see quality where I didn’t actually expect to see it.

RR What excites me about poetry is its mysterious aspect. I find the whole process of writing and appreciating poetry a complete mystery. That is what draws me to it. Good poetry either makes the commonplace and the quotidian extraordinary and strange or it does the opposite; it clarifies something complex and vague. At the same time, I’m very nervous about having to account for these mysterious editorial decisions. I never have to at work, and so I never think about it. I publish writing that I love and that matters very much to me and I won’t publish stuff that doesn’t. This is entirely subjective and people may disagree with the choice and that’s fine. But my job is publish work I consider to be important.

DP At the end of the day you want to publish the best, you’re honour bound to do that.

Any other things?

RR I’m just fed up with people not sending return stamped address envelopes. Also asking for critical comments, when we’re getting so many submissions a week.

DP The last thing that I as an editor want to see in the covering note is a sentence that says something like “X has said this is really good” where X is another poet. I want to be able to come to it on my own.