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

The recent BBC poetry season has been responsible for a spike in the sales of poetry despite there being a general slump in bookselling this summer caused by the economic downtown. Sales of the work of John Milton, Sylvia Plath, Tennyson, Philip Larkin, T S Eliot and John Donne all tripled after being featured in the season of programmes while George Mackay Brown’s Collected Poems became the must-have volume, with sales increasing by over 800% after ‘Hamnavoe’ was highlighted on BBC 4’s ‘Poet’s Guide to Britain’.

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A campaign is gathering support to preserve a seaside shelter in Margate where it is believed TS Eliot sat and wrote part of the The Waste Land. Thanet Council, inspired by mention of Margate Sands in the poem, have made an application to make The Nayland Rock shelter a listed building and are ‘invoking’ the word ‘wasteland’ as part of a tourist drive for the resort to emphasise the area’s wider cultural connections. Nick Dermott, the council’s conservation expert, wants the shelter elevated to the status of a literary landmark. “The Waste Land is held by many to be the 20th century’s greatest poem. The Nayland Rock shelter was, it seems, the place where The Waste Land finally came in to focus in the poet’s mind.” Former poet laureate, Andrew Motion, has added his weight behind the crusade – “The Waste Land is one of the most important poems of the 20th century and the survival of the Victorian shelter in which TS Eliot wrote part of it is a minor miracle,” argues Motion. “To anyone that cares about poetry, the shelter is a shrine, a temple, a small monument to a great genius.”

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A bright light among the media kerfuffle surrounding poets and poetry this summer, new Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy announced a new poetry prize funded by the donation of her yearly £5,750. The Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry, will be awarded annually throughout Duffy’s 10-year term as laureate to a UK poet working in any form – including poetry collections (for adults or children), individual poems, radio poems, translations and verse dramas – who has made the ‘most exciting contribution’ to poetry that year. Nominations for the prize will be made by the Poetry Society and the winner will be decided by three judges (appointed by the new laureate) with the first winner announced next March.

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We’re very saddened to hear of the death of Matt Simpson who died aged 73 in June. Author of six collections, most recently In Deep (2006), Matt was also well known as a children’s poet, with a new volume for younger readers What The Wind Said published at the end of last year. That was when he should have been appearing at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival to launch that very book, but sadly ill-health prevented him from doing so – before the eventual routine heart surgery which led to his death. His work will forever be associated with Liverpool (although he was never one of the Liverpool poets), capturing the wit, voice and feel of the place in many of his poems. There was a meticulous honesty running through his poems too – a good man and a fine poet who will be missed.

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The winners have been announced of the inaugural Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets – congratulations go to Elizabeth Burns who won the pamphlet award for The Shortest Days (Galdragon Press) while Oystercatcher Press won the UK poetry publisher award. Both winners receive £5,000. Among the short-list for the publisher’s award was Helena Nelson’s HappenStance Press – Helena certainly deserves recognition for sterling and tireless work. The awards aim to highlight the importance of the pamphlet form in introducing new poetry to readers and to celebrate the continuing vibrancy of the print pamphlet in the internet age. The 120 entries were judged by poets Ian McMillan, Jackie Kay and Richard Price. Also just announced before we went to press were the winners of the 2009 Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition. Winners – Nuala Ní Chonchúir, David Morley, Paul Maddern, Dawn Wood will see their submitted manuscripts published in pamphlet form this autumn.

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Winners of the 2009 Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition have been announced by the National Poet ofWales, Gillian Clarke. The first prize of £5000 goes to Jane Routh, second prize of £500 to Christopher Simons and third prize of £250 to Emily Berry. And £50 each to the runnersup: Marianne Burton, Laila Farnes, Stephen Moore, Philip Tomkins and PatWinslow. Congratulations to one and all. 59

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An ‘offbeat’ museum is attracting visitors in San Francisco this summer. The Beat Museum is described as a trove of memorabilia, displayed a bit like someone’s bedroom by the sound of things – with old photographs, letters, clippings from magazines and newspapers, books and album covers – with plenty of Ginsberg and Kerouac paraphernalia too. There is even a shabby chair and sofa with egg and coffee stains visible which have no connection with any beat poet, but a sign nearby explains that they typify the kind of furniture that a beat writer may have had in their apartment. However, if anyone feels cheated and wants their money back the owners are more than happy to refund your $5 admission – although apparently the large bookstore which can be found on the first floor tends to pacify any beat fan who has made the visit.

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Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has owned-up to the fact that he’s not averse to writing the odd poem occasionally, albeit using a pen name – Jacob Gershon – when the verses were published in 2007 in ‘Rubbish Magazine’ (that is the title of the magazine not an editorial comment). In a recent Guardian interview Radcliffe also admitted that modern poetry and free verse “irritates me” but he is a fan of Simon Armitage. “He has such an immaculate grasp of metre and rhyme, if he wanted to do poems like that, he could. But sometimes free verse, for me, is for people who can’t do structure. And when I don’t write in form and metre, I become unbearably self-indulgent. It’s what Robert Frost said: free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

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During a recent research project into reading habits conducted at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, a cross-section of the public nominated poetry to be the most annoying category of book currently published. The experiment saw a hundred different people a day being given books on various subjects (fiction, creative non-fiction, historical romances, fantasy etc.,) to be read for eight hours under strict scientific conditions. Participants’ pulse, heart rate and brain activity were measured while their attitude and general demeanour were closely observed. ‘Cookery books were the most satisfying’ reported Florin Griever, Chief Lecturer in Analytical Reasoning, ‘while celebrity memoirs scored highest, achieving some kind of mental stimulation in otherwise essentially dormant brains’. Griever adds, “They act as a sort of chewing gum for the mind.”

On ‘poetry day’, participants were forced to read a selection of contemporary volumes, including some by English poets, with the following results – after a sustained period of reading poems, thirtysix complained of headaches or migraine, twentyseven suffered indigestion, and two became argumentative resulting in a violent exchange. Despite this Dr Griever did point out that poetry did score well as a sedative – “eighty-two of the hundred people tested did fall asleep for prolonged periods at some point during their reading of poetry.” He continued, “Of the twenty that were reading only first collections, forty-five became tense and highly agitated, thirty-eight were lethargic and dulled and three were recorded as feeling nauseous, while one particular man became sexually aroused and had to be physically removed from the building.”

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Congratulations to Lorraine Mariner whose book Furniture (Picador 2009) has been shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Prize. Lorraine’s poems have appeared fairly frequently in the magazine and we published a pamphlet of her work. She’s also read at several events we’ve organised. She’s deliciously funny. Hopefully this success will mean that she’ll soon be appearing at a reading venue near you: don’t miss her.

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Date for the diary. Emily Wills and Michael Mackmin will be representing The Rialto at the Wordsworth Trust on October 31st, at an event set up by Inpress. Further information in due course.

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And November brings the 25th Aldeburgh Poetry Festival: Rialto will once again be sponsoring the Masterclass (possibly renamed to sound less old style). There will be a difference this year - one of the poems worked on will be published in its before and after versions in a subsequent edition of the magazine.