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

poetrymagazines note: Please note these bios were published in 2001.

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG (1923–2000) was an outstanding poet and painter. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1923. He attended Sedbergh School 1938- 41 and served in the army from 1942-47: fought in the Mountains of Italy 1944-45; then in Palestine and Egypt from 1945-47 as an instructor in the Army Education Corps. Later worked as a librarian in Newcastle and then in London. He moved to Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1957, where he and his Indian wife ran a small hotel and opened Jersey's first Indian Restaurant in 1959. Mai Zetterling, David Hughes, Lawrence and Gerald Durrell ate there. In the 'sixties he was on the mammal staff at Gerald Durrell's Jersey Zoo. He also had exhibitions of his paintings at the Jersey Arts Centre and at the Jersey Museum, where he was for a time Chairman of the Barreau Arts Committee. In the early 'seventies his Andium Press published books by young poets and painters, including Leslie Norris, Jim Burns, Jeremy Reed (his first book) and Martin Booth. Some of his war poems were published in More Poems of the Second World War (Dent's Everyman Series) and his poem "The Meadow" was included in a Penguin anthology of War Poems. His long poem Memories from Underwater was published by Cloud in 1996. It was highly praised by Peter Russell, Kathleen Raine, Jim Burns and Jeremy Reed and favourably reviewed by William Cookson in Agenda. In December 1997 the University of Salzburg published his Collected Poems 1961-1996. Three groups of Michael's poems were set to music by the composer William Alwyn and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Another series was set to music by Madeleine Dring in 1982. An interview with Michael was published in W. Görtschacher's Contemporary Views on the Little Magazine Scene (Poetry Salzburg, 2000).

JAMES BROCKWAY (1916-2000) made his home in Holland after the Second World War and busied himself introducing English novelists to the Dutch and Dutch poets to the English. He published five books of Dutch poetry in translation as well as some seven hundred other placings of Dutch poetry in English periodicals. For this work, James received the prestigious Martinus Nijhoff Prize in 1966 and was awarded a knighthood in the Netherlands in 1997. A collection of his own poetry, No Summer Song, had been published by the Fortune Press in 1949 but he laid poetry aside in a flurry of other activities. In the 1990s, however, he began to write again in his own voice. A Way of Getting Through (1995) and The Brightness in Between (2000) were published by Rockingham Press. James died on 15 December 2000. He was a regular subscriber and contributor to The Poet's Voice and visited the University of Salzburg in 1996 giving both a guest-lecture on his work as translator and critic and a poetry reading. A long interview with James is included in Wolfgang Görtschacher's Contemporary Views on the Little Magazine Scene (2000).

THEO BROWN has been brought up in an ancient house in Somerset which has imbued him with a romantic dreamer's spirit. He enjoys walking through the countryside and discovering forgotten places. He is currently studying Classics in London.

IDRIS CAFFREY. Born in the market town of Rhayadar, mid-Wales. Now lives in Tamworth, Staffordshire. His fourth, and most recent, collection is Warm Rain (K.T. Publications).

JEFFREY CARSON was born in 1944 and raised in New York. Since 1970 he has lived with his wife, the photographer Elizabeth Carson, on the island of Paros, where he teaches at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts. He also spearfishes, accompanies the local chorus on the piano, and writes poetry, translations, criticism, and travel essays. Three of his books are Poems 1974-1996 (U. of Salzburg, 1997), The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis (Johns Hopkins U., 1997), and a guidebook entitled Paros (Lycabettus, 1977).

COLETTE CONNOR. Poet and Playwright. Born and lives in Dublin. Short-listed for a Hennessy Award 1994. Her work has appeared in various periodicals and anthologies including Poetry Ireland Review, Books Ireland, Cuirt 4, Chapman (Irish Issue), Writing Women etc. She was a participant in the 1999 National Writers' Workshop at NUI, Galway.

NANCY L. DAHL, employed at Eastern Michigan University as coordinator/advisor of the graduate teacher certification program for the Professional Certificates. Also sponsored a country singer, Cecilia Lee from Tennessee, to sing 14 of her poems and some of her melodies. The CD is called Global Love (CD $15, cassette tape $10 plus $3 for mailing). The money for Global Love is donated to an eye client in Michigan.

MARK DeFOE is professor of English at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He has published three books, the most recent being AIR (Green Tower Press, 1998). His work has also appeared in Paris Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Durham, Malahat Review, Sewanee Review and many others. One of his poems was a winner in The Atlanta Review's 2000 International Poetry Competition.

GARY DUEHR lives in Boston, where he works as a photographer and visual arts critic. His collections of poetry are Winter Light (Four Way Books, 1999) and Where Everyone Is Getting To (St. Andrews College Press, 1999). Journals in which his poetry has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Hawaii Review, Iowa Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Texas Review.

ANDREW DUNCAN (co-)edited Angel Exhaust. He has published many collections of poetry, among them Cut Memories and False Commands (Reality Studios, London, 1991), Alien Skies (Equipage, 1993), Skeleton Looking at Chinese Pictures, Pauper Estate, and Switching and Main Exchange (all 1999). His new collection is entitled Anxiety Before Entering a Room: Selected Poems 1977-99 (136pp, perfect bound, ISBN 1-876857-03-X Australia $19.95 (including GST), USA $12.95, UK £7.95, Publication date 1 May 2001, Salt Publishing).

LISA FISHMAN grew up in urban and rural Michigan, moving almost yearly from town to town. She has lived in Salt Lake City these past 4 years and is now living in Manhattan. Ph.D. in English (Univ. of Utah, 1998). She teaches at Beloit College, Wisconsin. Areas of specialization: 19th–century British literature, classical poetic theory, modern American poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, Poetry Northwest, The Prairie Schooner, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and the prestigious anthology Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2000). Her first collection entitled The Deep Heart's Core Is a Suitcase was published in 1996.

LEAH FRITZ and her husband moved from New York, where she had lived all her life, to London in 1985. In the United States she was known for her essays and freelance journalism, which culminated in two non-fiction books about the various political movements there in the 1960s and '70s. Since she has been in Britain, three collections of her poetry have been published by Loxwood Stoneleigh: From Cookie to Witch Is an Old Story (1987), Somewhere en Route (1992), and The Way to Go (1999).

CHARLES HOBDAY is the author of Edgell Rickword: A Poet at War (Manchester: Carcanet, 1989) and A Golden Ring: English Poets in Florence from 1373 to the Present Day (London: Peter Owen, 1998), and the editor of The Collected Poems of Edgell Rickword (Manchester: Carcanet, 1991). He has published four collections of poems, of which the most recent is How Goes the Enemy? Selected Poems 1960-2000 (Bath: Mammon Press, 2000).

JENNIFER HILL KAUCHER lives in Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, with her husband and eight-year-old daughter Helen. She is vice-president of the Mulberry Poets and Writers Association, and is a rostered poet with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her poems have appeared in Yarrow, The Endless Mountains Review, The Mad Poets Review, and Hedge Apple.

NANCY RYAN KEELING lives with her husband in Cypress, Texas. She is a multimedia artist and has twice exhibited at the MOCHA gallery in Oakland, California. Her play Hail Holy Mother took first in dramatic writing at the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference. In summer 1997 she was writer-in-residence at New Light Studios in Beloit, Wisconsin. Her short story "Black Powder" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in April 1999. Estrogen Power was published by Red Dancefloor Press in June 1999.

PAULINE KIRK has published two novels, Waters of Time (Century Hutchinson) and The Keepers (Virago), and six small-press collections of poetry. Partner in the Fighting Cock Press, and editor of local history and social studies booklets. Appeared at many venues, including Cheltenham, Lancaster, and Ilkley Festivals, and has facilitated creative writing groups throughout West Yorkshire. Formerly employed in Adult and Continuing Education, and as a Senior Officer with Leeds City Council Department of Social Services. Received a New Beginnings Award from Yorkshire and Humberside Arts (1994/5) to become a full time writer. Born in Birmingham and moved to Leeds in 1978.

HOLGER KLEIN, born 1938, has taught English (and, for a long time, Comparative) Literature in Cologne, Norwich, Poitiers, and Salzburg. He has been active in the fields of Renaissance Poetry, editing English and Scottish Sonnet Sequences of the Renaissance (1984), early prose fiction, organising a CD-ROM of the novel 1500- 1700, of Shakespearean Studies, with critical editions and translations of Hamlet (1984) and Much Ado About Nothing (1992; Henry IV is in preparation), furthermore the field of committed literature, editing The First World War in Fiction (1976) and The Second World War in Fiction (1984); one of his special interests is J. B. Priestley, on whom he published J. B. Priestley's Plays (1988); another monograph, J. B. Priestley's Prose Fiction is in the press.

YANN LOVELOCK is a Birmingham (UK) based writer and translator whose Landscape With Voices was published by University of Salzburg Press in 1995. As a Buddhist, he has been widely involved in educational work and inter-faith dialogue. Currently he is also involved in inner-city Capacity Building and edits his area's community newspaper, Bright Spark, in characteristically lively manner.

EDWARD LOWBURY has published over twenty collections of poems, including Time for Sale (1961), Daylight Astronomy (1968), The Night Watchman (1974), Selected & New Poems (1990), Collected Poems (1993), and Mystic Bridge (1997). Also Hallmarks of Poetry: Reflections on a Theme (Essays, 1994). He is co-author, with Alison Young, of To Shirk No Idleness, a critical biography of her father, the poet Andrew Young.

ANNE MacLEOD's poetry is known from Cape Breton to Salzburg. She lives on the Black Isle in the North of Scotland and works as a dermatologist. Her first poetry collection Standing by Thistles (Scottish Cultural Press, 1997) was shortlisted for a Saltire Award. Just the Caravaggio appeared from Poetry Salzburg in 1999, and The Dark Ship, her first novel is to be published in May 2001 by 11/9, the new fiction imprint of Neil Wilson Publishing.

MASSIMO MAGGIARI was born in Genova in 1960 and lives presently in Charleston, South Carolina. He teaches Italian language and literature at the local College, where he organizes intercultural exchanges between Italian and American poets. He specialized in twentieth-century Italian poetry and has published several articles, essays and reviews in European and American journals.

NICHOLAS MARTIN is a Canadian citizen now living (and writing) in the south of England. His credentials include the completion of a BA in English Lit./Philosophy (double major) from the University of Calgary.

PAUL MAZERY. Of Irish nationality, but born in Durban, South Africa. Has lived for some time in Portugal, where he lectures in English at the Science and Technology Faculty of Lisbon's Universidade Nova. He has been writing poetry for many years. His most recent collection is Spaces Explored (University of Salzburg Press, 1997).

JANET McCANN. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she has taught at Texas A & M University since 1969. Has co-edited two anthologies, Odd Angles of Heaven (1994) and Place of Passage (2000). She has also co-authored a textbook (Creative and Critical Thinking, 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1985) and written a book on Wallace Stevens (The Celestial Possible, Macmillan/Twayne, 1995). Most recent poetry collection: Looking for Buddha in the Barbed Wire Garden (Avisson, 1996).

MICHAEL GREGG MICHAUD lives in Los Angeles, California. His poetry, short stories, and non-fiction have appeared in over 150 magazines and anthologies in most English-speaking countries. His latest book is Bedtime Stories (Fortunate Rhythm Books, 1998).

JOHN MUCKLE was the founding editor of Paladin Poetry – though not Rupert Murdoch's right hand man. He co-edited the magazine Active in Airtime, is the author of The Cresta Run, Cyclomotors (Festival Books, 1997)and other works. He taught at the University of Essex for five years and is currently resting between lives.

YOGESH G. NAIR. Indian English poet, widely published in Indian and international magazines. Three collections of poetry: A Mute Witness (Writers Forum, Ranchi, 1994), To This Busy World (The Plowman, Canada, 1996), and The Seed (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1999).

RICHARD O'CONNELL's poetry has appeared in Acumen, Poetry and Audience, and The Poet's Voice. His most recent collection is The Bright Tower (University of Salzburg Press, 1997).

TODD JAMES PIERCE. The British edition of his new novel The Sky Like Tamara Blue will be released in September 2001 by Quintet Books. His work has appeared in over 40 magazines.

ESTILL POLLOCK was born in 1950 in Clark County, Kentucky. For a time, he lived and travelled in the American South working as an itinerant tradesman. His early poems were published in regional journals, and nationally in Poetry. Later, he emigrated to England with his family, where he has lived for twenty years as a British subject following the rescission of his citizenship by the US government. This period coincided initially with his decision to cease writing poetry, but after fifteen years, he wrote the sequence of poems Metaphysical Graffiti, published as a pamphlet in 1998. Constructing the Human (Poetry Salzburg, 2001) contains selections from earlier publications in the United States as well as poems published recently in England. This book is the first movement of the trilogy Decorative Initials for a Book of Hours.

JEREMY REED was born in Jersey. He is acknowledged as Britain's foremost poet and novelist, and has been described by Kathleen Raine as "the most imaginatively gifted poet since Dylan Thomas." He has received all major literature rewards including the Eric Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Poetry Society European Translation Prize. He lives in London, trying to avoid the literary scene. Jeremy Reed is one of the most fruitful contemporary writers and poets with about forty published novels and poetry collections.

SUSANNA ROXMAN, born in Stockholm but with Scottish roots, is a poet, critic, and literary scholar. She writes in both English and Swedish. She is an editorial adviser to Understanding, the Edinburgh literary magazine. She is one of the internationally best known Scandinavian poets. In 1984 she got a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg. She is Head of Lund University's Center for Classical Mythology. She has often contributed to British, Canadian and American magazines such as The Spoon River Poetry Review, Windsor Review, Nottingham International, Sidewalks, and Whetstone. In 1996 she received the Arts Award of the City of Lund for her collection of poems entitled Broken Angels.

M. A. SCHAFFNER has poems recently published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Fine Madness, The Hollins Critic, The Formalist, Orbis (UK), Imago (Australia), and Poetry Wales. Schaffner's first collection, The Good Opinion of Squirrels, published by Word Works, won the Washington Writer's Center publication prize and the Columbia Book Award.

M. P. A. SHEAFFER is a Professor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. A member of the Poetry Society of America and the American Academy of Poets, she has edited four anthologies of poetry and has authored Moonrocks and Metaphysical Turnips (2nd ed., Oct. 2000) and Lacquer Birds and Leaves of Brass. A third volume, Paths, was also published in England in 2000.

MICHAEL T. SOPER, born in 1946, is a printer by trade, and a contract administrator for the US government. He translates from Chinese and Portuguese, classical and modern poems. His interest in Camoes stems from the study of early Portuguese involvement in India and Asia, and he recently completed Xavier Wakes, a collection of lyric and narrative free verse. He is currently translating the Lydia poems of Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa) to contrast them to the Ricardao-Lydia story of Jose Saramago's novel.

VIRGIL SUÁREZ was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. Since 1974 he has lived in the United States. He is the author of over fifteen books of prose and poetry, most recently of the poetry collection titled In the Republic of Longing (Bilingual Review Press / Arizona State University, 2000). His poetry, stories, translations, and essays continue to be published in journals and reviews the likes of TriQuarterly, Field, Cimarron, Meridian, Callaloo, The Ohio Review, Artful Dodge, The Caribbean Review, Salmagundi, New England Review, Ploughshares, The Mississippi Review, The Kenyon Review, and Prairie Schooner, and many others nationally and internationally. Next year Palm Crows, his fifth collection of poems, will be out from the University of Arizona Press "Camino del Sol" Series. Currently he is at work on a new collection tentatively titled Caliban Ponders Chaos, from which this poem was taken. He divides his time between Miami and Tallahassee where he lives with his family.

DONALD WARD was born in 1909 in Belmont, Surrey. His first book The Dead Snake (Allison & Busby) received an Arts Council Award in 1971. Anvil Press produced Border Country, Mandeville Press and Mammon Press published three pamphlets. His most important collections are Lark Over Stone Walls (Hippopotamus, 1993), Collected Poems (U. of Salzburg, 1995), and Selected Poems 1956–1996 (U. of Salzburg, 1996).

BEN WILENSKY, 66, has been a merchant seaman, soldier, news reporter, and art teacher. He favors good wine and whiskey, Chinese food, and American football. He works out at a gym three times a week. He is married to the great love of his life. His work has appeared world-wide.

ZORAN ZINZOVSKI is a Sydney-based poet. Born in Bitola, Macedonia. His poetry has been published in Australia and Japan. Educated at the University of Tasmania School of Art, and at the Sydney College of the Arts. He has received a 1998 Editor's Choice Award from the International Library of Poetry, and was equal second in the 1998 Clarissa Stein Multicultural Poetry Prize Competition.