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

MAGAZINES

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION No 11, $1.75, eds. Andreas Schroeder & J Michael Yates, 945 West 7th Avenue, Vancouver, B C, Canada. A wide range of competent translations from African, Japanese, Greek, etc., writers; the poetry is generally better than the prose. Akpalu / Kinoshita / Kunze / Ritsos / Lorca.

DARK LUNCH No 1, 5p ed. David Pope, School of Graphic Design, Kingston Polytechnic, Knights Park, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. Home-made comics from Kingston Poly students, some first-rate. Anyone looking for new illustrators or just ideas should see this.

DATR No 1, 5p, ed. John Noyce, 67 Vere Road, Brighton, Sussex. Duplicated; 18 pages of unobjectionable but not very memorable poetry and prose. Campbell / Logan / Upton.

DUST No 15, $1.00, ed. Wally Depew, 819 17th Street, Sacremento, California 95814, USA. Two special sections of French artist Jean- Francois Bory & US conceptual artist, James A Bauman.

- No 16, a special issue devoted to poetry and drawings by inmates of Canada’s Folsom Prison.

- No 17, Half of this consists of 22 drawings by schoolboy Doug Avery, “A day in the Zoo in 2002” (sample “this bird is a penguin; he likes the extreme cold, he also likes fish, so come see him starve.”), which make it well worth the dollar. The other half consists of 11 pages of simple geometrical patterns with frills by Richard Kostelanetz and 15 pages chosen at random from a 200 pagc hook by Alastair MacLennan. In an opening note, Mr MacLennan claims there is a “form/content relationship” in his writing, but it looks like automatic writing to me . . .

ENVOI No 42, ed. J C Meredith-Scott, “Seven Levels”, Marle Hill Parade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Nicely printed but rather odd. The poems keep getting interrupted by curious announcements about prizes, the nature of which I couldn’t really understand - who won and what did they win? And why? The poetry is very uneven.

EXTENSIONS No 7, $1. 00, eds. Suzanne Zavrian & Joachim Neugroschel, PO Box 383, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025, USA. Obviously intended to be ‘experimental’ and ‘avant-garde’. See Edward Marcotte’s ‘Meditations Embracing A Game View of Existence’, for example. Best poem: David Shapiro’s ‘The Destruction of the Bulwarks at Deal’. Best prose: Lawrence Alloway’s comments on Arakawa’s painting series ‘The Mechanism of Meaning’. Interesting reading.

HEADLAND, dated January 1972, 25p, eds. William Oxley & Gerald England, 27 Brook Road, Epping, Essex. Unexciting reading, with a lot of the names one expects to find. The layout tends to be a little too cramped for comfort sometimes. Plomer / Jaffin / Edmonds / Sneyd / Cairncross / Tipton / Finch.

HIATUS No 2, l0p, ed. Stanley Engel, 12 Stevenage Road, London SW6 6ES. Hiatus re-emerges after a year’s interval. Physically, a good example of what can be done, with care, by simple means. Contents (poetry, prose, illustrations) are uneven, but could develop into something interesting. Promising. Fromberg / Sneyd / Queneau / Pasolini / McNulty.

ISHMAEL No 2, 50p. ed. Francis Boylan, Librarie du Luxembourg, 68 Rue d’Assas, Paris VI, France. A lot of Patrick Kavanagh, a very wordy play by Boylan, an essay on Pound by C H Sisson. Also Antonio Machado, Brian Oxley and David Wright. Elegantly produced, but I can’t really see what purpose is served by it.

KROKLOK No 2, 25p, ed. Dom Sylvester Houedard, 262 Randolph Avenue, London W 9. Retrospective anthology of sound poetry, well printed and presented. Essential if you are interested in the field, otherwise incomprehensible. Schwitters / Mayer / Severini / van Doesburg.

LINES No 9, 10p, ed. Geoff Holland, 9 Park Crescent East, North Shields, Northumberland. Duplicated, poetry only plus reviews; some of the poetry is muzzy, some pedestrian, some promising. Pearce / Finch / Surtees / Ward.

- No 10, an issue of greater variety and quality and, again, a good review section. Sneyd / McGough / Kirkup / Rice / Cashford.

LUDD’S MILL No 4, l0p, ed. Steve Sneyd, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield HD5 8PB. Huddersfield’s literary gazette. Comment, poetry, prose, collages. Must be a lot of fun to produce.

MODERN POETRY IN TRANSLATION No 11, 50p, ed. Daniel Weissbort, 10 Compayne Gardens, London NW6 3DH. Well printed and interesting as usual. I particularly liked the translations of Lars Gustafsson’ s poems. Tsvetayeva / Transtromer / Darwish / Zahrad / Octavio Paz interview.

MUSE No 1, 18p, Birmingham Poetry Centre, c/n B M I, Margaret Street, Birmingham 3. Midlands poets only at present. Competently produced but weak on illustrations. Of less interest to outsiders, as is always the case with regionally orientated publications.

OUTPOSTS No 90, 15p, ed. Howard Sergeant, 72 Burwood Road, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Competent and mostly dull poetry, no sooner read than forgotten. Oxley / Porter / Salmon / Booth.

PARIS REVIEW No 52, 30p, ed. George A Plimpton, 17 Rue de Tournon, Paris VI, France. One of the most interesting of the ‘established’ American magazines. As usual, the prose is more exciting than the poctry. Part two of Harry Matthews “The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium” and James Blake’s “The Happv Islanders” are particularly recommended in this number. Also included is a long interview with Anne Sexton, for anyone who is interested in Anne Sexton. Good value.

PENELOPE No 5, ed. Agustin Del Rosario, Apartado Postal 2968, Panama 3, Republic of Panama. Fifteen duplicated sheets in Spanish of poetry by seven poets from Argentine, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.

PINK PEACE No 2, ed. John Rice, ‘Bag End’, 1 Darby Road, Folkestone, Kent. Interesting, well - printed magazine, though oddly old fashioned in appearance. Contains some uneven local poetry, snippets about D. H Lawrence and the Folkestone Poetry Circle, and a local what’s on section. Contributors ages range from 4 to 84 years. Should improve considerably when it becomes more open to outsiders. Cairncross / Rice / Nixon.

POET Vol 12, No 3, $1.00, ed. Orville Miller, 7 Montclair Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. An Israeli number edited by Walter Barzelay. The magazine of the World Poetry Society, printed in Madras, which proudly claims to be “avidly read by one million poetry lovers in over 100 countries”. An appeal from founder Krishna Srinivas informs us that “poets alone can cry halt to the feverish haste of nations, heading towards a disaster” All this, and the tatty printing, should not put you off reading this issue for a competent once-over of the Israeli poetry scene.

PRISM INTERNATIONAL Vol 11 No 2, $1.75, ed. Jacob Zilber, Dept. of Creative Writing, University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, BC, Canada. Poetry, prose, photos. A solid, professional job, which completely failed to fire me in any way. The poems by Bogdan Czaykowski and William Virgil Davis stand out; Alain Bosquet’s prose is a brilliant example of self-indulgent gloop.

SANTIAGO, No 2/3 & No 4, ed. Nils Castro, Direccion de Extension Universitaria, Universidad de Oriente, Santiago de Cuba, Republic of Cuba. An academic, Spanish language, literary-based magazine, which covers a broad range of allied subjects in long articles, including poetry and fiction. It contains work by non-Cuban writers, such as Brecht and Anna Akhmatova. Not obsessively left-wing. Well-structured and livelily presented.

SECOND AEON No 14, 20p, ed. Peter Finch, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Cardiff, CF4 2NB. Still one of the most stimulating English magazines around. Non-partisan, non-regional, reasonably eclectic and attractively produced. Weak on prose, strong on poetry and illustrations. Ginsberg interview is riotously funny; A. G. is starting to sound like a music hail parody of himself by now. Matthews / Burns / Neruda / Booth / Grubb / Wantling.

STAND Vol 13 No 1, 25p, ed. Jon Silkin, 58 Queen’s Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE2 2 PR. Stand always seems to get hold of readable prose, in this case John Morris and Johannes Bobrowski. Unfortunately much of this issue is taken up by a lamentable play by Ana Novac. Generally good value but unexciting. Levine / Vallejo / Quebec poets.

STRANGE FAECES No 7, 32p, ed. Opal Nations, 42a Pembridge Road, London W 11. Duplicated, 44 foolscap pages, a grab-bag of poems few of which fully come off, but it’s worth browsing through anyway. Lee / Finch / Violi.

TRANSGRAVITY ADVERTISER Nos 1 & 2, 20p, ed. Paul Brown, 176 Peckham Rye, London SE22 9QA. Would you believe a single foolscap sheet consisting of (issue 1) five crappy poems by Edward Dunmow and (issue 2) a collage poem by Opal Nations plus small ads. all selling for 20p a throw? You do however get a few dirty pictures thrown in . . . Also issues 3 & 4.

WORMWOOD REVIEW No 42, $1.00, ed. Marvin Malone, P0 Box 8840, Stockton, California 95204, USA. American poetry, some amusing, some silly, some very good. Recommended. Locklin / Deutsch / Bukowski / Witt.

J C Stathatos

BOOKS

BIELSKI, Alison, 20 monogrampoems, Writers’ Forum ‘Fives’ No 2, 262 Randolph Avenue, London W9, UK. 15p.

BROWN, Paul, Coat of Many Colours, 6 newspaper collages, 176 Peckham Rye, London SE22 9QA, UK. 20p.

BULLOCK, Michael, Green Beginning - Black Ending, Sono Nis Press, Dept. of Creative Writing, University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, BC, Canada. A collection of prose fables. £2.40.

DEMELIER, Jean, Le Reve de Job, a novel, Editions Gallimard, Paris, France.

DEPEW, Wally, Once, booklength visual poem, Dustbooks, 5218 Scottwood Road, Paradise, California 95969, USA. $1.00.

FINCH, Peter, editor, Typewriter Poems, collection of visual poetry made entirely with typewriter, joint publication by Something Else Press, New York, and Second Aeon Publication, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Cardiff CF4 2NB, Wales, UK. 35p.

GURNEY, John, The Saltstone, collection of poems, Outposts Publications, 72 Burwood Road, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. 20p.

HARRIS, Paul, Snap of the Wishbone, 16 Poems, Together Publications, Glanyrafon, Hool-Yr-Yagol, Yugasdre, Tondu, nr Bridgend, Glamorgan, Wales, UK. 10p.

HILL, Richard, Hard Up, a collection of 29 poems, Driftwood Poets No 3, from Driftwood Publications, 48 Middlesex Road, Bootie L20 9BW, Lancashire, UK. 15p.

HODGES, Cyril, Remittances, collection of 18 poems, Second Aeon Publications, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Cardiff CF4 2NB, Wales, UK. 15p.

JACKSON, Dawson, Darkness & the Spring, poems, Magpie Press London, 36 Sherard Road, London SE9 6EP. 50p.

JENKINS, Philip, The Fantasy Childhood Reset, visual poetry, Second Aeon Publications, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Cardiff CF4 2NB, Wales, UK, 12p.

JOHNSON, Tina, In Transit, collection of 28 poems, Hub Publications Ltd, Youlgrave Bakewell, Derbyshire, UK. 45p.

LAMBERT, Cecily, Greek Neighbours, poems, Headland Poetry, 34 Albany Road, Sheffield S7 1DP, UK. 20p.

McGRATH, Anne, Sullivan’s Saga City, 15 poems, Aquila Publishing Co., 18 Atherstone Close, Shirley, Solihull, Warwickshire & the Birmingham Poetry Centre, c/o BMI, Margaret Street, Birmingham. 15p.

MORGAN, Christopher, Anarchist in the Rosegarden, 10 poems, Second Aeon Publications, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Cardiff CF4 2NB, Wales, UK. 15p.

NATIONS, Opal L, Screen-Teen, a collection of poems and other works, 1970-1972, Strange Faeces Press, 42a Pembridge Road, Notting Hill Gate, London W11. 25p.

NIJMELJER/BROWN, Stud/Onex, collaborative poems, Transgravity Advertiser publication, 176 Peckham Rye, London SE22.

SNEYD, Steve, Icarus Landing, poems, Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, UK. 10p.

von TERSCH, Gary, This One is for Janie, collection of poems by US poet, Second Aeon Publications, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Cardiff CF4 2NB, Wales, UK. 12p.

VALOCH, Jiri, Ga, Sound poems by Czech poet, Writers Forum ‘Fives’ No 1, 262 Randolph Avenue, London W9, UK. 15p.

VOIST, Clinton (+ Antony R Martin & Pamela A Bennet), Triad, poems by three poets, Pink Peace Publications, ‘Bag End’, 1 Darby Road, Folkestone, Kent, UK.

Especially recommended are ‘Typewriter Poems’ edited by Peter Finch, ‘Remittances’ by Cyril Hodges, ‘Anarchist in the Rosegarden’, by Christopher Morgan, ‘The Saltstone’ by John Gurney and, for those who know French, ‘Le Reve de Job’ by Jean Demelier.

MISCELLANEOUS

CATALOGUE OF LITTLE PRESS BOOKS (in print and published in the UK, 1970), The Association of Little Presses, 262 Randolph Avenue, London W 9, UK. 40p.

DIRECTORY OF SMALL PRESS EDITORS 1971, Dustbooks, 5218 Scottwood Road, Paradise, California 95969, USA. $2.50.

LAISSEZ FAIRE, sheet one in a series devoted to individual little magazines & dealing with Agenda, Outposts, Expression One & Samphire, The Ember Press, 128 Ember Lane, Esher, Surrey, UK.

POETRY INFORMATION No 4, BCM/Oracle, London W1, UK.

POETRY NEWS No 5, ed. J C R Green, 18 Atherstone Close, Shirley, Solihull, Warwickshire, UK. 7 1/2 p.

SMALL PRESS REVIEW Vol 3 No 1, ed. Len Fulton, Dustbooks, 5218 Scottwood Road, Paradise, California 95969, USA. $1.00.

LATE ADDITIONS

THE CANADIAN FICTION MAGAZINE No 4, eds. Janie Kennon and R W Stedingh, 181 West Windsor, North Vancouver, Canada. Slightly smaller than previous issues, with a rather ugly binding - staples driven right through. Better contents than usual - more concentrated, less perversely surrealistic. Worth reading. $1.50.

LAISSEZ FAIRE, The Ember Press, 128 Ember Lane, Esher, Surrey, UK. This is the second in a series devoted to analysing little magazines. Three sides are devoted to looking at Ian Hamilton’s The Review and Scrip, two long standing members of the little magazine scene. If you’ve never read either of these, these sheets would be helpful: they are judicious and objective. Good reading.