George Hammond
Reviews
Fire #23,25,
Field Cottage, Old White Hill, Tackley, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, OX5 3AB, www.poetical.org, £7 for 2 issues, £9 for 3 issues, A5 bound, 199pp to 203pp
Fire is a magazine of generous proportions. Each magazine has anything up to 225 poems collected from all over the world. This is not just a case of publishing everything that is received; each poem is there on merit. Obviously in such a large selection there will be some that are better than others but there are no weak poems here, none are questionable, all are eminently readable. Issue 23 contains a selection of poems from Burning Deck Press, an American publisher of forty years standing. Although issues can be themed, 25 is concerned with place, this does not affect the variety or quality of poems. There are some fine poets appearing in Fire, a personal favourite Kenneth C Steven gives lines such as
Like the shudder of breeze over the black loch
Like the unfurling of swans
Other poets touch nerves or invoke memories, Lauren Rush writes of
Small mahogany horses cresting together in one wave
And Jenny Clarkson hints at life's difficulties with
My biography is boulders maneuvered together
It is something of a shame that, once the backlog of accepted work has been cleared, Fire will be downsizing to just one issue a year.
Page(s) 38-39
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The