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

Ireland, the small island with the twentieth century’s big name poets and novelists, is starting the twenty-first not only awash with mature talent, but also bursting with literary activity at every level. It should be no surprise. Of today’s leading English language poets, Heaney didn’t become famous in a vacuum. Behind every Paul Muldoon, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Derek Mahon or Mebh McGuckian, there’s a queue of equally good poets who are less well known than they should be outside Ireland. And behind them, there is a ferment of authorship.

The literary scene reflects, and lives off, modern Ireland: the outrageously prosperous, outrageously corrupt Celtic Tiger economy, with its gleaming dot com enterprises, its multi-million pound bribery scandals, its rash of new holiday homes all over the West for the new rich, and its brutally excluded pockets of urban and rural poverty. Irish culture has always respected good writing, but the new prosperity is now rewarding it with high profile (and big money) national and regional competitions and festivals, and publication in remarkably well sponsored poetry magazines and small presses.

For the visitor from England, this presents a real opportunity - to meet new poets, either in print, or in the flesh at one of the many summer writing festivals; to extend the choice of writing workshops available; and to find new outlets for publication. But where to start?

Let’s take Listowel, a small but handsome market town far in the south west. Its English equivalent might be Totnes or St Ives. But North Kerry has a remarkably strong local writing tradition fostered by residents like John B Keane (uncle of BBC’s Fergal Keane, and author of The Field), Bryan McMahon, Brendan Kennelly and others. Thirty years ago, John B and friends organised the first Listowel Writers’ Week. Now it’s a fixture. This year’s was opened at the end of May by President Mary McAleese, with over £IR10,000 of prize money on offer, eight three-day workshops (two for poetry), a wide programme of readings, lectures and book launches, and an even wider array of pubs hosting poetry sessions noon and night (at which the late Michael Hartnett, a towering figure on the Irish poetry scene, was much remembered for both word spoken and liquor taken).

The poetry workshops (£IR60 for three days’ participation, but board, lodging and the hard stuff extra) were split between “getting started’ and “more advanced”. The Belfast poet Mebh McGuckian led the advanced and Paddy Bushe, a fine formalist poet from Kerry, the starters. By all accounts, the dozen or so advanced participants engaged in pretty detailed, close up analysis. The twenty starters, drawn from local writing groups all over Ireland, with a handful from England, mainland Europe and the US, went fairly conventionally through each other’s work.

For the English visitor, the real excitement of Listowel Writers’ Week, and of the many similar festivals all over Ireland, North as well as South, throughout the summer, is the opportunity of getting to know a subtly different English speaking culture firsthand, through its famous and its not so famous poets.

Any Writers’ Week is also a show case for small presses and magazines. Fiction, often a gritty and troubled reflection of the frantic pace at which Ireland is changing, is where the real buzz is in today’s literary Ireland, followed still by nostalgic lyrical autobiographies evoking the calmer days of the 1930s or 1940s. The latest, Rory O’Connor’s highly successful North Kerry memoir Gander at the Gate, was launched at Listowel this year.

Ireland’s poets, on the evidence not just of recently published poetry collections by well established figures, but also of what is being written about in this year’s workshops and poetry magazines, are easier looking back than forward. Many poets are writing searchingly and movingly about the histories of their own families and localities in the near and more distant past. Much of this poetry is in English, but a substantial amount is in Irish, usually with a parallel English text available.

Interestingly, the Irish writing often seems less nostalgic, and sharper edged, than a good deal of the English. There is also a deep lyrical vein celebrating the light and shade of daily life. What is only intermittently apparent is successful poetry about Ireland in the new millennium, which can match the dash and daring of the novelists, the short story writers and the journalists.

Of the poetry publishers, Peter Fallon’s Gallery Press is outstanding. Its range of poets, established and newly emerging, is impressive (over 300 books of poetry and plays so far) and the editing and design is of high quality. As well as being an elegant editor, Peter Fallon is a good poet in his own right and has just reprinted News of the World, his selected and new poems.

Of the magazines, the quarterly Poetry Ireland Review is equally pre-eminent and equally well-presented. It combines established and emerging poets with the odd review and essay. For 124 pages you pay £IR5.99 which is extraordinarily good value for money. Of the many more regionally focussed or produced magazines, Dublin has had The Stinging Fly since 1998 (£IR8 for three issues of short stories and poetry a year); and a very classy newcomer has lust emerged in West Cork - THE SHOp, edited by John Wakeman, formerly of The Rialto (£IR11 for three issues, £IR9 concessions). All of these publications are sponsored by both Arts Councils in Ireland, North and South, as well as successfully attracting private support. The level of sponsorship makes for high production values at very affordable prices.

What are your chances of being published in any of them if you are not obviously Irish? Not that great! To start with, all this literary ferment means that everyone in Ireland seems to be both writing and submitting poetry. Biddy Jenkinson, who’s just taken over as editor of Poetry Ireland Review, described in her first edition the sadness she felt at having to turn down 1,545 of the 1,605 poems submitted. But beyond straight numbers, Poetry Ireland Review seems to draw its contributors almost exclusively from those living in Ireland or writing about it as a result of some direct link.

All is not lost. As the current Irish football and rugby teams show, a fairly tenuous connection will suffice, and if the poem is good enough, then just having visited Ireland may be enough. Lynne Wycherley, English based, who appears elsewhere in this Magma, has a poem about Kerry in the current Poetry Ireland Review (Howard Wright, from the University of Ulster, is another Magma writer to appear both in recent Poetry Ireland Reviews and in THE SHOp). Finally, the monthly Books Ireland not only includes poetry in its literary reporting, it also has the equivalent of an open mike slot for unsolicited writing of all kinds, including poetry.

Useful addresses:

Listowel Writers’ Week
PO Box 147
Listowel
Kerry, Ireland
email: [email protected]
(Writers’ Week 2001 dates: 30 May -3 June; entries for competition at New Year)

Poetry Ireland Review
Bermingham Tower Dublin Castle
Dublin 2
Ireland
email: [email protected]
(in her recent first issue, editor Biddy Jenkinson regretted the absence of fixed forms and asked for submissions)

The Stinging Fly
PO Box 6016
Dublin 8
Ireland
email: [email protected]
(editor Declan Meade requests no more than 4 poems be submitted)

THE SHOp
The Rectory
Toormore
Goleen
Co. Cork
Ireland

The Gallery Press
Loughcrew
Oldcastle
Co. Meath
Ireland

Books Ireland (New Writing)
11 Newgrove Avenue
Dublin 4
Ireland
email: [email protected]