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

I have to declare an interest here. It is a very great pleasure to be able to feature as our first Rising Star short story writer a woman whose work I’ve watched develop and deepen over almost a decade. Aoi Matsushima’s writing has a quiet, introspective intensity, infused with a determination to recognise and reach out beyond the boundaries of self and nationality, not least in the fact that she chooses to write in English rather than her native Japanese. Her central characters are ordinary people with particular ways or points of view, adjusting to the circumstances and people around them. Often women, usually Japanese, never representative of anyone except themselves, they surprise us, challenge our expectations and stereotypes. Though not much may happen in the stories, the characters travel emotional distances, making connections with themselves, other people, the past, the landscape. Aoi’s style has an uncluttered ease, nothing more or less is said than necessary. It is as if the pressure of writing in a foreign language simplifies things, enables her to be more apt and exact in the words she chooses than many English writers with all the resources of the language at their disposal. Where slight oddities in idiom or phrasing occur, they are felicitous, refreshing our response to familiar words and ideas. And, though she professes not to be able to write poetry (at least in English), her work naturally uses symbol and metaphor to establish mood and meaning in a way that reminds me of lyric poetry. An ideal candidate, therefore, to be Brittle Star’s newest Rising Star.