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

     With this our twelfth issue, Magma has now been published three times a year for four years. We have never yet included an editorial - but the time has come when you might like to hear a bit more about us.

     Magma is unusual in being run by a group rather than an individual. A few poets of similar affiliations got together four years ago, shared out among themselves the various jobs that needed to be done, and decided that each issue should have a different editor, not always from among themselves. Members of the group have come and gone over time, but our way of operating remains the same.

     The poetry we stand for is, broadly speaking, contemporary in idiom rather than of the past, rough in texture rather than smooth, urban rather than rural. But we have never defined it as a matter of editorial policy, because we believe good poetry has a way of evading all creeds, whether aesthetic or political, and we know that we may receive poems of quite a different type, and if we think they are good we will want to print them.

     As we have become better known, established poets have become interested in giving us poems and interviews. But we are particularly interested in finding and publishing new poets. Our contributions come from all over the world. We run special features from time to time - recently, poems from San Francisco, and from schools. We hold poetry readings when new issues come out, and invite the poets in that issue, and others who come along, to read. The readings are advertised in Time Out and elsewhere.

     We have never received any sort of grant, and are entirely self-financing. This means we are not as glossy a production as some, but we are not deflected from what we ourselves want to do in order to meet some grant requirement. It helps if you take out a subscription, as then we know a bit better what lies ahead of us, and it would also be helpful to have people willing to self the magazine, especially outside central London.

     The new issue has poets drawn from wider afield than ever. We hope you enjoy it.