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

We welcome comments and exchange of views. We will shorten letters if they are too long or we disagree with them.

Dear Editor

1. what’s with the seagull gibes? It’s alright for you living, no doubt, in a seagull free zone. I live below a family of seagulls. And they are as nice a bunch as you could wish to meet, but their presence does lower property prices. Not that I have anything against seagulls. In fact some of my best friends are seagulls. I would suggest, that if you wish to court the patronage of ‘the southern coast-dwelling subscribers’, that you keep your seagullist remarks to a minimum.

2. I find also that my fruit juice, cereal, toast and marmalade and even my house have sneaked into the pages of your magazine, courtesy of Mr Steve Waling. Of course, I am very flattered. The next door neighbours haven’t even made it into Homes and Garden yet. Please let me know when the photographers are due. I need to tidy up. It’s the seagulls you know.

Yours,
John Coldwell,

11 Park Road, Ramsgate, Kent CT11 7QN.

[In my family Ramsgate is always referred to as ‘the last resort’. I now see why - Janet]

Dear Janet, Peter (and Andrew)

thansk for The North 9. Always a source of jealousy & admiration for its ‘production values’: it’s the best looking magazine around. Soem poems 17m sure we’d quarrel baout but a fair few corkers too - Steven Waling especially good I thought. After the remembrance of my first year Eng Lit ‘Practical criticism’ course had fadeed I thoguht the blind criticism feature was a good idea, though maybe you should include one of those little blue bags of salt for soem of the responses. Stanley Cook’s peice on Williams was ab it slight I thought, thoguh I certainyl agreed with him abiout ‘paterson’. The continued influence of ‘no ideas but in things’ is certainly something we should think about. (Im much of the best new poetry ‘things’ seem to be joined to a more narrative-based idea, and with more verbal exuberance - Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell for instance.)

Best wishes
Mark Robinson (Editor of Scratch),

24 Nelson Street, The Groves, York YO3 7NJ.

Ps: please excuse the typing. It is sunday morning.

[Mark’s creative typewriter augurs well for the future of Scratch - one of the best of the new magazines, and not to be missed.]

Dear Editors

OK, I admit it, I wasn’t going to renew my sub. So what made me change my mind? Issue 9, that’s what, and especially:

- the ‘Blind Criticism’: a really useful feature and an inspired choice of poem;

- the absence of space wasted on handwritten poems. A good graphic wins every time if you want a break from the typewritten page;

- the absence of anything as crass as ‘Index of First Lines’ in Issue 8 (could you imagine anyone sitting through a reading of that?)

- the admission, implicit in the Editorial, that you just might feel that your wider readership is tired of being lectured that Huddersfield is the P…

Best wishes
Andrew Gibbons

The Old School, Bricklehampton, Pershore, Worcs.

[After an editorial reply we received another letter from Andrew]

Dear Janet

How perfectly courteous of you to reply to my maundering - and with such alacrity. I must take issue on one or two points. Chief among which is that, though I think ‘Index’ is crass (no more than a joke - and an overlong one at that), I don’t dislike Geoff Hattersley (whom I’ve never met) or the majority of his work: I even quite like ‘Mucky’ (North 8) - despite its taking up a full page handwritten. So, no invented antagonisms, please - I might just want to flaunt my own stuff in the Width of his Skirt. However, I utterly agree with you that no index is designed for reading aloud and am fulsomely ashamed for having overlooked such an obvious point. And half of me accepts your reasoning re handwritten pieces - the other half finds it hard to believe you have a whole blank page left with Press Day looming. [You should be here: Ed.]

All the best
Andrew.

PS Sorry, this is a bit dog-at-bonish, but in what sense is ‘Index’ ‘authentic’?

Dear Peter

I enjoyed The North 9. The prac crit feature was very nostalgic - I didn’t cheat, and decided it was neo-romantic forties ‘grand deuil’, taking itself very seriously indeed - I was amazed at how much your panel liked it - I hope your ‘critical service’ offers rather more sceptical advice [it certainly does, James, - try it, Honey. Ed.]. Anna Adams’ remarks are likeable but indulgent, Killick’s vague and inaccurate, if not actually ‘blind’ - the poem is not ‘in between day and night’ it moves from evening to midnight to dawn to daylight to ‘again evening’ - and Morley’s obstetrics are hysterical - but never mind! Some of Prynne’s prose makes me squirm and squeal too, so who am I to talk?

I liked Milner Place’s and Jeanette Hattersley’s poems best - ‘Sexagesima’ is excellent in that Huddersfield mode - the ‘capitalist’ school, as one might call it. [Ha, ha, geddit? Ed.] Also Ruth McIlroy’s ‘First sighting this year’ is brilliantly acid, but also rather poignant. Lovely cover and the woodouts are nice too - especially ‘Madonna with Spanner’, and ‘Irises’. I thought the magazine roundup a complete waste of time, though, a real disappointment. If your reviewers want to be funny and/or snide, they might look at jsc 5 and 6 vintage, or even the sports pages of most newspapers, since they’re so keen on football. Is there one illuminating or amusing remark in the four pages? ‘Ed.’ sounds as though he arrived a free transfer from Jackie - what about ‘You’re fired! Ed.’ to liven things up a bit?

Best wishes

James Keery,

25 Sutton Avenue, Culceth, Warrington, Cheshire WA3 4LN.

Dear Peter

The North really is beginning to look good now, though more criticism/articles are needed, I think - you know, more compost for the flowers. I personally also feel that the ‘jamjar school’, the ‘flip’ Northern poem, requires astringent appraisal. Too many writers seem to write about trains, teapots and their lover’s socks! Am I missing out? You know, as if the workshop wrote the poem rather than the poet.

Very best regards,

Andy Sanderson

168 Jenkin Road, Sheffield S9 1AW.

[You know, Andy, we traced one teapot (and Myra Schneider is hardly a flip Northerner) but no socks or jamjars. But we know a metaphor when we see one, you know. Love, Eds.]