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

MAGMA is a magazine of poetry and writing about poetry, published three times a year in Summer, Autumn and Winter, with a selection on our web site. We publish poems by both new and established poets, and we look for poems which give a direct sense of what it is to live today - honest about feelings, alert about the world, sometimes funny, always well crafted. When we decided on the title Magma, it was to suggest the molten core within the world, hidden as deep feelings are and showing itself in unpredictable movements, tremors, lava flows, eruptions.

Magma is unusual in being run by a small group rather than an individual. Several writers with a roughly similar view of poetry got together and shared out the various jobs that needed to be done. They decided that each issue should have a different editor but, for continuity, each editor is advised by the editors of the previous and subsequent issues. The strength of the rotating editorship is that each editor brings his/her particular interests to bear, resulting in poems and emphases that no-one else in the group could have predicted. We feel that this arrangement works because we have a similar idea of what makes a good poem.

Magma 26 (May 2003) is being edited by Mick Delap. Following on the 'Foreign Lands' theme of this issue, he would like to receive poems on the theme of separation from home - exile, migration, dislocation or what you will. Contributions by mid-March 2003.

Magma 27 (October 2003) is being edited by Tim Robertson and its theme will be same-sex relationships (lovers, family or friends). Contributions by the end of June 2003.

The launch reading for Magma 25 is on Monday 3 February at 7.30 for 8pm at the Troubadour Coffee House, 265 Old Brompton Road, London SW5. The nearest tube station is Earls Court. The guest poets will include Marius Kociejowski, Roddy Lumsden, Pascale Petit and Mario Petrucci.