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

Women poets sometimes tell me they are afraid to be labelled ‘confessional’. We should not be. It is early days and we have a long way to go in describing ourselves as we are. I want to focus mainly on an exciting new anthology, A Touch of Malice, edited by Joy Howard. First, however, a reminder that some publications linked with the Second Light network (published or co-published) are either in whole or in part women’s thoughts about being women: Making Worlds, Images of Women, My Mother Threw Knives (see below for publication details). 

The title Making Worlds refers to the exercise of imagination, but also to the new opportunity (yes, it is still very new) to reinterpret the world as women see it, especially ourselves as we see us. Recently, I caught myself thinking ‘Why bother?’ when surely there are complete, convincing portraits by men. Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina – who will go deeper? 

Considering further, these two portraits of women could be seen as quite distorted, the fate of these women skewed to make them icons of danger to men and to the family. Did the natures of these women, as portrayed, necessarily lead to the dire outcomes laid out for the poor creatures? The male writers show penetration and some (more in Tolstoy’s case) admiration and sympathy but the action of both novels may be animated by, what? – actual if unconscious malice? Another problem is that women writers of the past have very often followed men blindly, as we see in the extremely contrived fate of Maggie Tulliver... I am only playing with ideas, acting as devil’s advocate, but there is scope for a rethink – at least, for listening hard to contemporary voices of ‘liberated’ (if we are?) women.

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A voice tells us, “there are packs of ferocious carol singers / out on the hunt” (This Christmas, the Spirit is Rum, Anne Stewart), another that, “I have left the banjo in the fridge / And scraped off most of the cheesecake” (Message, Helen Burke), another that, “In that T-shirt / her breasts are certainly infectious” (Infection, Berta Freistadt), another that, “Chaos / is merely an arrangement / you don’t understand” (From the Void, Joy Howard). Where are we? 

Well, this is the voice of a handsome anthology of around 100 ‘uncomfortable poems by older women’, 36 of them. The titles of the six sections say it all: All’s Well that Ends Badly; Ghosts, Ghouls and Visitations; Hellhags and Changelings; You Have Been Warned; Shape-Shifting; And Another Thing. This is the book which ought to be on some celebrity’s list of their Books of the Year, but probably won’t. 

Someone said, ‘All comedy is black comedy and the black is the important bit’. Some of these poems made me laugh outright without being sinister. But I rejoice at the way indignation, a powerful emotion, can stir the imagination: “Here’s another poem to lay at your feet / Or to ram down your throat” (Here’s Another Poem, an address to her father, Rosemary McLeish). 

In a good anthology, even one which presents as ‘humour and delight in subversion’, there must be poems which stretch the mind. There are examples here of craft, shaping of material and expression which are true poetry. From Anne Stewart’s rhyme of “pretty” with “machete” (When All You Need’s a Knife) to Christine Coleman’s clever approach in Down to the Wood, where a poem about a failed marriage focusses throughout on a table, “each // year he inserts another leaf. Mahogany...”, to Marianne Burton’s amazing, The Roses, predicated on what the roots of rose-bushes encounter, “Who else would go / eyeless under the earth for you?”, there is poetic edge and edginess. 

No doubt some of the poets here began writing tongue in cheek. There are, for example, poems about cutting up, or making a good bonfire with, an errant partner’s clothes – developed in original ways and good fun. We find however that here and there imagination gets its teeth into the comic scenario. In Portrait, Isabel Thrilling, sharp and economical as ever, inserts a stiletto into a malicious tea-time guest, “Beware / the glaze in conversation; // pearl-handled knife beneath”. In Miss You Nights (Marianne Burton) we find a limpid passage of fine writing, “I took your upper lip between my lips / and crimped it gently like a pie-crust / fluted it with my teeth. But it didn’t work.” Donna La Morte (Jenny Morris) describes an owl – the bird is seen as an icon of fear and distress, “She holds up a mask to hide her skull. A stiff, white Venetian face”.  

MR Peacocke can be terse but pointed, “A voice in the orchard / when I was digging. Here I am, hair and bone... ” (No-One). A more surreal poem by Peacocke, Wordnurse, focusses on the persuader who arrives to make the reluctant poet write, “clipping new fuses to my eyeballs / plugging me in”. View from the Crossroads (Angela France) is a challenging, sombre poem in the voice of a woman hanged as a witch, who lists all the ‘crimes’ she did not commit, “I’ve never / met a man I’d lie for, so one that’s half-goat won’t bend me”. In her powerful poem I, the Sea, Christine Webb speaks eloquently in the voice of the sea of the power of the moon, “I celebrate her queenship with my colours – / my steel, my sand, my glaucous marbles / my clouded lion-coloured glass // I rise towards her / with my giant curves / my molten architecture”. 

Aren’t “glaucous marbles”, “clouded lion-coloured glass”, “molten architecture” graphic? Gnash your teeth, male poets elevated above your station! 

By the way, there is an excellent apparatus in this book, enabling you to find individual authors quickly and an invaluable set of CV details for the poets. Buy this one. Put it on your Christmas list.

Making Worlds
eds: Gladys Mary Coles, Myra Schneider, Dilys Wood 2003, Headland. 272pp, £10.95, ISBN 1-902096-70-3

Images of Women
eds: Myra Schneider, Dilys Wood 2006, Arrowhead. 211pp, £12.95, ISBN 1-904852-14-9

My Mother Threw Knives
eds: Wendy French, Maggie Sawkins, Dilys Wood 2006, Second Light Publications. 77pp, £4.50, ISBN 0-954693-1-8

A Twist of Malice
ed: Joy Howard,
2008, Grey Hen Press. 123pp, £8, ISBN 978-0-9552952-2-5

and forthcoming from Seren Books:
Women’s Work, Modern Women Poets Writing in English
eds: Amy Wack, Eva Salzman, 2008. 364pp £12.50 (£25 hardback)