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

Lots of poetry prizes to report – congratulations to Emily Berry, Rhiannon Hooson, James Midgley, Adam O’Riordan and Heather Phillipson who have all received Eric Gregory Awards, given for a collection of poems by a poet under the age of thirty.

Another prize to a young poet was given as part of this year’s Northern Writers’ Awards. Toby Martinez de las Rivas from Gateshead has received the Waterhouse Poetry Award, in memory of Andrew Waterhouse, whose prizewinning first collection was published by The Rialto. A good way commemorate a fine poet.

Meanwhile in Canada the $100,000 Griffin Poetry Prize – the richest poetry prize in the world for a volume of poetry – has been divided between two winners this year. John Ashbery’s Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems and Robin Blaser’s The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser share the prize.

The shortlist for the this year’s Forward Prize has been announced. The five collections nominated for the £10,000 are Sujata Bhatt’s Pure Lizard, Jane Griffiths’s Another Country, Jen Hadfield’s Nigh-No-Place, Mick Imlah’s The Lost Leader, Jamie McKendrick’s Crocodiles & Obelisks and Catherine Smith’s Lip.

Contenders for the £5,000 prize for best first collection are Simon Barraclough for Los Alamos Mon Amour, Andrew Forster for Fear of Thunder, Frances Leviston for Public Dream, Allison McVety for The Night Trotsky Came to Stay, Stephanie Norgate for Hidden River and Kathryn Simmonds for Sunday at the Skin Launderette while Seamus Heaney, Christopher Buehlman, Catherine Ormell, Don Paterson, Kate Rhodes and Tim Turnbull are up for best single poem prize. The winners will be announced on October 8.

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In the spring we were saddened by the news that poet, writer and dramatist E.A. Markham had died in Paris. His Selected Poems were published in 2003 and a memoir, Against the Grain, will be published posthumously.

The poet Elizabeth Bartlett died in June aged eighty-four. She published her first collection of poetry in her mid-fifties, and her most recent, Mrs Perkins and Oedipus (Bloodaxe), on her eightieth birthday.

Both these poets appeared from time to time in this magazine but we were particularly lucky to be the first publishers of Elizabeth’s longer poem ‘The Diseased Vine’, in issue number 53. Subtitled ‘A poem for four voices’ it reads, with its mixture of the everyday and the atavistic, like a brief libretto for a work by Sir Michael Tippett.

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A couple of competitions well worth a punt at. The Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition 2008 has a first prize of £2,000 and runners-up prizes of £750, £500 and £250. A shortlist of best poems entered will be printed in the TLS on October 24th and the readers will then vote for the poem of their choice. Aren’t we all looking for the X Factor? Entry fee: £5 for first poem, £3 for each additional poem, to a maximum of five per entrant. Closing date: September 12th 2008. An entry form can be downloaded from their website.

Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition carries a first prize of £750, second prize of £300 and third prize of £150 plus a Jarrold Norfolk prize of £150 (Book vouchers) which is open to permanent residents of Norfolk. Café Writers is a Norwichbased organisation that manages a popular reading series promoting established and new writers throughout Norfolk and beyond - they’re well worth supporting. Closing date 30th November 2008, sole judge - Penelope Shuttle. Entry form available from their website (Google ‘Norwich Café Writers’).

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The Rialto goes west this autumn (well, north - west then west ) with two live events. On Thursday 20 November we will be at the John Moores University, Liverpool, where EmilyWills and Michael Mackmin will be reading for creative writing students. Later that month, on Sunday 30 November, we’ll be in Bath for a public event – ‘The Rialto at The Poetry Café’ – where we’ll be celebrating two of our recent publications, Emily Wills’ second collection Developing the Negative and Richard Lambert’s The Magnolia. We’ll also have some readers from the magazine too. Should be a great evening. Hope to see you there.

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In September The Poetry Trust are launching The Poetry Treatment a year long project in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. Not only will staff, patients and visitors be able to enjoy poems on over 160 loo doors, in corridors, on canteen tables and on hospital radio, but employees, from cleaners and catering staff to nurses and consultants, will take part in free poetry reading and writing workshops led by Michael Laskey, poet and founder of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and Jane Anderson, the Poetry Trust’s Learning and Outreach worker. As part of the project there will be a careful evaluation. Contact The Poetry Trust on 01986 835950 or [email protected] if you would like to be sent a copy of the report.

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Amid the mounting speculation over who will be the UK’s next Poet Laureate, one Norfolk based poet has put himself forward for the post. Mr Fred Ketch a 68 year old retired pig farmer from Aylsham has written a letter to the Queen, Gordon Brown and the Tory leader David Cameron, in which he asks to be considered for the job.

“As soon as I heard it was coming up I thought I’d give it a go” said Mr Ketch who has self-published all of his seventeen short collections which he mainly sells at the local post office. His most popular titles – ‘Ketch’s Sketches in Verse’ and ‘The Puppy Dog Tales’ are both now both in their sixth edition and have ‘sold shed loads’. “I’ve got nothing against these other poets in the running,” Mr Ketch, told his local newspaper, “but I frankly don’t understand what they’re on about most of the time.”

The poet laureate is appointed by the Government but the selection process is shrouded in mystery. “I don’t see why we don’t put it to the vote like what they do with the dancing on telly” said Fred, “We each read a poem and then the public decide. I’d be proud to do it for my country and county. I’m always writing poems about the Queen anyhow. And dogs too and I know she likes her corgis.”

Did Mr Ketch consider himself a rank outsider? “I’m not sure if I’m one of those,” he told the assembled local reporters in his front room, “but we need a laureate who will make people smile with a nice rhyme or two. Something you can chuckle about. Not all the old squit that lot come up with.”