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

I had to laugh when I read ‘Poetry Editor’, by the Russian writer  Yevgeny Vinokurov.  ‘I was the poetry editor / A passive position to be in / Something female about it /  You’re flattered, coaxed. / Right from the start / I realised / I could only publish / One per cent of all the material / Worth bringing out. / Enemies increased / Geometrically. / The salary I got for this / All went in entertaining / The friends I’d offended’ (Daniel Weissbort’s translation).

Alas, I get no salary, and realise that you are unlikely to waste much sympathy on editors.  But I will just point out that I don’t use this magazine to unload my own work, that I offer a reasonably fast service, and that I have brought many lesser-known writers into print.  So may I make a few modest requests?

Do not send me business correspondence;  that should go to Anne Chisholm.  I want to see only your creative work and only your best.  If there is no answer, either you forgot the stamped addressed envelope or it got lost in the post (if you send me a s.a.e. or your phone number I’ll let you know).  Do not send work when another piece has recently been printed or is in the pipeline. I believe this magazine should be a platform for several talented people, not the same few people each time.
      
Having said all that, I enjoy the job and don’t know anyone else who is prepared to do it.  As Yevgeny says, ‘I might have hated poetry / Really hated it, for good / If it hadn’t been for the occasional line’.  A great deal of fine work finds its way to The Interpreter’s House and I am always trying to raise the standard.