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

Welcome to iota 75,

Firstly, an accolade for our old friend Geoff Stevens, who reaches an amazing milestone this October when he completes thirty years of editing Purple Patch magazine. Geoff’s love affair with poetry is beyond argument - he might feel that sometimes it’s beyond reason as well! Purple Patch has survived because of his determination to do things his way, and we salute him. Even the 30th anniversary of that first issue, way back in 1976, coincidentally overlaps with National Poetry Day. Geoff has never been a lover of The Poetry Society or the ‘critical establishment’ and it was with typical relish that he announced: “October 2006 has been designated Purple History Month in tribute to minority poetry publications.”
Purple Patch no.115 will be published in October and celebratory events are planned. The website to keep track of it is http://www.purplepatchpoetry.co.uk/ 

   Geoff Stevens and Martin Holroyd from the newly re-labelled poetry monthly.com - issue 126 ( http://www.poetrymonthly.com ) was released in September, incidentally, which means Martin has now done more than ten years in that job - are both expected at the first Stratford on Avon Writers’ Festival on the weekend of September 30- October 1. There are workshops, discussion sessions and open mics on both the Saturday and Sunday. We’ll be there. Bob comperes an open mic at the White Swan at 8pm on the Saturday and chairs a discussion on approaches to writing at the United Reformed Church Hall in Rother Street on the Sunday at 2.30pm, so if you want to say hello please make yourselves known to us. The festival information line is 01789-299524.

   Jane Kinninmont, whose Seven League Stilettos collection we were proud to publish in 2004, has her own 30-minute slot at Cheltenham Festival on Saturday, October 7, at the Beehive pub. Jane is appearing in a back-to-back reading with Jane Yeh at 2 p.m. (£4). Still with Cheltenham Festival, Bob is the guest poet at the Town Hall on Wednesday, October 11, at an evening of work presented by the Gloucestershire Writers Network. That’s at 9pm, again £4.

   We realise it’s taken a bit more time to produce iota than usual. The computer problems that were a significant factor in the delay of 74 continued to plague us over the summer. We were hoping to finish before our August holidays, but in the end had to accept that was impossible. Hopefully, we’ll have everything sorted out once and for all by no.76, which is scheduled for the end of November. There have also been difficulties with email submissions. We did clear the backlog by August, but some that were sent to us in May and June were cast off into the ether. If you did send us work by email around that time and haven’t had a reply, please contact us.

   Because of the sheer amount of work that comes in, every editor of a poetry magazine of any size has the unhappy task of sending out rejection letters. It’s never easy to get this right and each editor has his or her own way of doing it.  We are sensitive to the fact that it’s hard to have poems turned down and have tried to find a way of doing it with courtesy and respect. Inevitably, however, there are those who handle rejection less easily than others. Because of the immediacy of the email process, those who react badly can now hammer out a response and press the ‘Send’ button almost before they have had time to consider it. The occasional letter from an aggrieved poet we can accept well enough - it comes with the territory - but aggressive email responses to rejection are becoming increasingly frequent, and frankly, it’s a bit boring. This time we even had a threat of suicide, which may, or may not, have been a poor joke. So it goes. If you have a reasoned point to make about rejection, or the way in which it’s done, of course we’ll listen, but if you just want to let some anger loose, please think about pausing before you hit the ‘Send’ button.

   Cover photo for this issue was taken in Islington in about 1950 by Edward Fox.

   Thanks to all those who took the time to give reactions to iota 74. Long or short, we do appreciate it. This time there was a fairly wide spread of positive feedback, in particular for poems by Nell Grey, Adrian Buckner, J S Gavin, Grace Gauld, David Ford, Mim Darlington, Laura Forman, Rob Blaney, Carole Bromley and D A Prince. More detailed comments can be found on the iota website, along with the discussion forum, which is open to everyone.