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

These reviews are based on personal opinion, but should give readers some idea of each magazine before purchasing any themselves.

Note: publications are size A5 and subs include p p, unless otherwise stated. Likewise, all claim they are open to new and established writers.

Chapman (94)
Joy Hendry, 4 Broughton Place, Edinburgh EH1 3RX
www.chapman-pub.co.uk
Single copy: £6.00. 3 times a year; 104pps.
Payment: ‘by arrangement’. Circulation: 2000.
Response: ‘immediate return for most – a couple of months usually before ‘short leet’ turns around’.

Requirements ‘Interested in good writing. We do not otherwise specify and restrict. Mostly poetry and shorter fiction – also critical material and reviews – chief requirement SAE! Stories up to 5000 words considered, occasionally longer. Most published usually around 3000. Publishing work which has come, unsolicited, through the letterbox, is the bedrock of the magazine . . . we are always open to totally new, unknown writers’.

Review Nearing its 100th issue, and it’s not surprising for a magazine so sure of its identity to have an issue on ‘Scotland and Europe’. Europe, including Zagreb, and an epistolary short story about a Scottish soldier in World War I. One has only to flick through the Reviews section to discover a strong interest in Scottish identity: ‘it is surely time that Scots stopped patronising themselves’; ‘(each collection) seem entirely free of the traditional Scottish sense of grievance and stridency’; ‘it’s part of the legacy of Scottish decency, religion and virtually total emotional inarticulacy, that there is now a Scottish poetic genre in which loving, articulate sons attempt to give a voice to their silent fathers and grandfathers.’

     That’s not to say that there is no room for comedy. David Dennison’s sardonic ‘An Ode to the royal yacht, Britannia on her entry into Leith’ opens proceedings. There’s also a cohesion of view between the mix of short stories, comment and poems. ‘The Day Billy Bear’s Mum sent him to sign on’ draws humour from Scots literary outsider status, whereas elsewhere we find ‘The dominance of English as a language, as a literature and as a political system has resulted in a marginalisation of a great deal of writing from much of the British isles’.

     A good round-up of Scottish writing finds room for Gaelic and Scots (occasionally with translations). The female voice is also well represented including a story from Freda Churches, the skilful ‘Stanley’. Besides the odd single poem, poetry is presented in sequence, by Walter Perrie, Rab Fulton and Liz Archin, a good introduction to their work.

     A beautifully illustrated publication too, with tailor-made pictures illuminating the text, a nice change from vague black and white photos of silhouetted fence posts.

Em (3)
Karl Sinfield PO Box 10553 London N1 2GD
[email protected]  www.emwritingandmusic.com
Subs: Single copy: £7, $10 US. Overseas $15 – about £10. Frequency ‘when we can’ (No. 2, Jan 1998); 260 pps 18 track CD.
Payment: Profit share. Sadly, probably none.
Circulation: 500. Response: no guarantees; not accepting submissions at present, check website.

Requirements ‘Short fiction, fragments, word art, drama, graphic fiction, short pithy poetry, imagery, flip-book animations, anything really. Stories <1500 words.

   em is the broadest typographical mark – a dash the width of an ‘m’ – and that is a lot of what em is about; breadth. It’s also ‘me’ backwards.’

Review You can’t rush an artist. Karl Sinfield is a designer, and the slick writing perfectly matches the fresh presentation – worth buying for the photograph on p73. Buzzing with design ideas, a postscript reads ‘You have been watching em3’, a nod to the mixed media; the CD, containing several ambient instrumentals, serves as a great reading soundtrack.

     This particular issue doesn’t include poems, but memorable, almost lyrical phrases abound; a song by J.A.Davies is described as ‘a catchy rock and roller from the school they knocked down to build old school’. The disturbingly sharp Charlie Consite makes you wince, while J. D. Lennon’s ‘Unclimbing’ makes you laugh. ‘The satisfaction on reaching the summit was so exhilarating that I jumped and punched the air, and fell’. Almost everything has merit. Subjects include aliens, reality as film, concentrating on minutiae in times of crisis. Lines stick with you – ‘I had so much money I used to wander into Tower and say, buy all the Ramones albums’ writes Joe Ambrose in ‘Silk Jacket’.

     Many of the stories seem like extracts from ‘a story in 30-words’ sites and the magazine also includes several screenplays. Karl estimates that he won’t be accepting submissions for a year, but worth getting involved with such a project. Minibar, a band featured in the first issue, have gone on to feature in ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back!’ A 50 page guide to contributors at the back is a brilliant opportunity for exposure, and provides insight into the stories, a high number of which are based on experience, usually a good sign. The authors’ summaries make as good reading, and it’s interesting to see their faces.

     OK, not very helpful when sporadic invites to submit, but still a great read. If the Florence Tavern is where Karl went to think, as he writes in the preface, I suggest we all get down there immediatamente.

Magma (22)
David Boll, Editorial Secretary, Magma,
43 Keslake Road, London NW6 6DH
[email protected]  www.champignon.net/Magma
Subs: £11/3; £4 copy: 64pps, between A4 and A5. Free copy to contributors.
Circulation: 300 print website.

Requirements Seeks poetry in a contemporary style. Send up to 6 poems, by post with SAE or e-mail, not attached files.
Response: up to 3 months, usually less.
Magma: ‘the molten core within the world, hidden as deep feelings are and showing itself in unpredictable movements, tremors, lava flows, eruptions’.

Review An interesting brief, concerned with the clash between heart and world. ‘My heart a red salmon/landlocked in ice’, as Lynne Wycherley puts it. Since experience is often most vivid when one feels alienated, this makes for some good poetry. It is interesting to see themes recur – words translated into light along a glass telephone cable, the contrast between magazine advice and reality.

     Published Spring, Autumn and Winter and launched with a reading, the standard is consistently high, criticism firm. Although run by a group, each issue is edited by one person, and occasionally themed, like # 19’s ‘Taking Account of Love’. Previous interviews have included Mimi Khalvati, stating that form is all – she got into poetry by mistake, after turning up to the wrong Arvon course. A regular cast of writers appears within the pages, including Myra Schneider and the excellent Emma-Jane Arkady. Now in a larger format and with a splash of colour, alongside the poems there is an occasional illustration, article and review of poetry.

     The serialization of Lavinia Greenlaw’s ‘Presiding Spirits’ project, in which poets nominate an influence that lives on beyond their author, has reached the turn of John Burnside. There is also a consideration of poetry following September 11.

     Well worth the effort; as Deborah Tyler-Bennett writes in ‘The Roman Waits’, it has a ‘young stomach full of seeds’. One of the first poetry magazines to have its own website, so check it out.

Nomad (14)
Gerry Loose (NOMAD) SPS, 4C4 Templeton Business Centre,
62 Templeton street, Glasgow G40 1DA
[email protected]  www.spscot.co.uk
Subs pa: £6/3; single copy: £2.50. 44pps, in between A4 and A5.
Payment: £25 for poetry/prose.
Circulation: 250–500. Response: 6 weeks.

Requirements Interested in ‘all creative writing’, 2,500 word short stories if possible, 6 poems, one poem per page SAE.

Review Published by Survivor’s Press Scotland (SPS), Nomad – ie ‘No Mad’ – defines a survivor as ‘a person with current or past experience of psychiatric hospitals, users of tranquillisers and other medication, users of counseling and therapy services, survivors of child, racial, physical and sexual abuse, survivors of drug and alcohol addiction and other survivors who empathise with our experience including disabled people.’

     Its policy is inclusive, illustrated by an ad written in various scripts, each saying ‘send us your writing’. And socially responsible, yet it couldn’t be further from having a worthy tone. As Paul Brownsey writes: ‘I learned that laughter occurs at points of conflict between yourself and the world, and that if there is no such conflict there is no laughter.’

     This, ‘The Gay Issue’, begins with a poem from Edwin Morgan in which as usual you can hear his voice whilst reading, and, like Ricky Tomlinson, an aural rebuttal of enemies. And a great way to pick up slang: ‘bentshot’! Meanwhile, Lynsey Calderwood’s ‘What the Fuck is Alice?’ reminds you of the phrase a ‘Friend of Dorothy’.

     Diverse and lively, with illustrations by Dee Rimbaud, the format allows for long lines and it’s also well-organised thematically, similarities between poems being subtly emphasised. As well as the poems comes a wealth of short stories, many gripping: frustration at closed minds – including those of the young – keeping silent to keep safe, anger, opinion and standing up for oneself.

     There are several accounts of illness, how the ill are often treated like idiots. The protagonist in Roger Smith’s ‘Fade to Black’ has his last words misinterpreted; G. Grieve writes ‘Nobody likes sickness when it comes this ugly. They adore you when you’re mildly ill because you seem pretty in meekness. But when you’re rotting and full of filth and disease they run from you’. E K Reeder’s conceit ‘Listing’ demonstrates how your behaviour towards others will come back to haunt you, and stand-out story, Jude Martin’s excellent ‘The Letter’, knows when to be compassionate and when to walk away.

poetry and audience (41/2)
James Ward, Catherine Bates, Anthony Radice,
School of English University of Leeds, Leeds, W. Yorks, LS2 9JT
Subs pa, individuals: £5/2 UK, £6 overseas; institutions: £6/2 UK,
£8 overseas; single copy: £2.50: 51pps.
Payment: ‘none (sorry)’
Circulation: 100. Response: 2–4 weeks.

Requirements Quality new poetry. Mostly new writers. No restrictions on length.

Review An eclectic magazine with work of a consistently high standard, most contributions by previously published writers or those involved in a literary pursuit.

     ‘Effortlessly international’, its wide remit includes translations of Slovenian poet Kajetan Kovic and the Portugese Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, besides haiku and poems about the Serengeti and Tuscany, the occasional review and translation of Horatian odes. As well as the undiluted focus on poetry, it publishes sequences of poems by certain authors, a great showcase which allows the reader to consider a poet in more depth, for example, three by Diana Syder and six by Art Murphy.

     Subjects range from the eroticism of haircuts, to the sad lot of the inventor of the ‘equals’ sign. Particular favourites include David H. W. Grubb’s ‘Sometimes the words came off in our hands’ (first line: ‘It isn’t working.’), Andrew Mayne’s ‘Saved by American Express Again’ and Jonathan Asser’s ‘Progress’, in which a late bus is so representative of a decline in standards that he travels back in time.

Poetry Scotland (19)
Sally Evans, 93 Main Street, Callander FK17 8BQ
www.poetryscotland.co.uk
Subs: £5/5; single copy: £1. Twice yearly; 12pps, A4.
Payment: ‘occasional for commissioned or very long work. Less often now we have gone independent’.
Circulation: about 1000.
Response ‘usually one week for a reply, but things can get upside down. Poems will normally appear in either the issue being compiled or one of the next two after that.’

Requirements ‘Submissions need not have SAE if you don’t want the copies back but give an e mail address for reply. Packets liable to excess postage are not accepted.

     Features new and established writers, but beginners from Scotland only. English writing is treated as international. Interested in good poetry. Any kind. Competent work expected. Able to print long poems, the longest was 1500 lines. Able to print wide poems. Always include poems in Gaelic and Scots, sometimes French, Welsh etc. Anything else from ballad to haiku; often rhyming; I look for tension, clarity, liveliness, and point.

     Wall-to-wall poetry. A Scottish cultural bias but not prejudice. Up to date, responsive and willing to experiment. Undoubtedly the best Scottish magazine for poetry.’

Review The reader cannot go wrong; ‘tuppence a poem or less, a fiver for five issues, post free’. Admirable purity of purpose; unglossy, unpretentious, the poems stand or fall on their own merits. Cuts to the quick; foldable, and fits in a coat pocket, an alternative to the pocketsize poetry book, and contemporary with it.

Scintilla (6)
Anne Cluysenaar, Editor, Usk Valley Vaughan Association,
Little Wentwood Farm, Llantrisant, Usk, Gwent NP15 1ND Wales.
www.cf.ac.uk/encap/ceir/scntilla/scnhome.html
(Poetry Editors: Graham Hantill, Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, General editor Dr Peter Thomas)
Subs: £7.50 each issue. Annual (Spring); pps192, A5-A4.
Circulation: 350. Payment on publication.

Requirements ‘Editing over Summer and Autumn, but decisions are made together, usually in October. Seek shorter poems, but also long poems or sequences up to about 15 pages, writing with a metaphysical dimension and a sense of the interaction between humanity and the matter of the universe whether cosmic or terrestrial.

     Scintilla explores, in Modern terms, alchemical and spiritual themes central to the twins, Henry (the poet) and Thomas (the alchemist) Vaughan in the fifth century, and their sense of the traumas caused by civil war and personal illness and loss.’

Review A journal with a brief, it’s big on new poets, open to new forms and handles weighty topics with enthusiasm. Open to many disciplines, for example including tablature for Geoffrey Palmer’s setting of Henry Vaughan’s ‘Awake, Glad Heart!’. Issue 6 also contains details of the Fourth Scintilla Open Competition, which was won last year by a long sequence by Myra Schneider.

     Rewarding and quite exquisite in poise, illustrated with black and white photos of gargoyles, it still remains a little cold to the outsider.

The Stinging Fly
Editor Declan Meade, PO Box 6016, Dublin 8, Ireland.
www.stingingfly.org
Subs pa: £12/3,15 Euro; £4.50, 6 Euro. April, August, December; 50pps, A4).
Payment: 1 copy of issue 30 Euro for first poem; 20 Euro subsequent. 50 Euro per short story.
Circulation: 800. Response: at least three months, publication within the year, usually in next issue.

Requirements ‘Submit no more than two stories and/or four poems. First time fiction submissions should be less than 3000 words. No e-mail submissions. UK postage stamps not valid on SAEs. Please use IRCs. Samples of work from back issues are on the website.

     We’re most interested in good writing but that’s a difficult one to define’.

Review Well, this one knows its stuff, with a title from Plato and a heartening quote from Tennessee Williams: ‘Any work that has any honesty and a sufficient degree of craftsmanship or power eventually finds an outlet. I do have faith in that.’

     The current issue features an interview with the, yes, pretty Emma Donoghue, detailing how, when she wrote her first novel she ‘didn’t know how to get characters from one room to the next’, plus an interesting ‘historical short story’.

     Then there’s Mary Barnecutt’s ‘Counting Backwards’, a distressing account of a strengthening pregnancy ending in abortion. Mark O’Halloran’s writing is edgy and funny; ‘The head of Red O’Brien’ begins with a man stabbed through the head by a wife who doesn’t share his love of films, something with which he learns to acquiesce. It ends with the line ‘And then one weekend it arrived and changed my life forever. The greatest film ever made, starring the world’s greatest actor: The Hunt for Red October.’

     With a great cover, showing rain-drenched Dublin, and printed on good quality paper, this is a fresh and glossy mix of things literary – short stories, poetry, translations (alongside the originals), interviews and articles. ‘Of course, any debate about history is usually less revealing about the era under discussion than the time when the debate is taking place’ writes Michael Cronin. Similarly, looking at things far from home can speak of home more clearly; the first three poems range from Germany and Venice to China. Priests appear in more than one, as does architecture, and the poet a callous cameraman in Oliver Dunne’s ‘In the Province of Chang’. This is a handsome magazine, with imaginatively grouped poems.