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

When we think of poetry festivals we tend to think of big names and
huge auditoria. But poetry is at heart an intimate exchange between
a reader and a writer. When you pick up a book, sit down and start
to read, nothing exists but you and that poetry. Reading a poem
takes you on a journey, sometimes geographically, historically or
politically, but always emotionally.

   There is something of this intimacy in smaller poetry festivals. Festivals that might have three or four wonderful reading events in
one or two rooms in local halls and a programme of workshops and
book launches. In a way they feel like a gathering of friends rather
than a public event.

   I’d say the most intimate small poetry festival I’ve ever been to is
Poetry On the Lake in Orta in Italy. Part of its intimacy comes from Orta itself; a beautiful mediaeval town over-looking the lake and Isola St Giulio, but much of it comes from the woman who organizes the festival and all the people that help her. I haven’t met anyone, for a long time, who has the enthusiasm and passion for poetry that Gabriel Griffin has. Her graciousness, generosity and sense of humour are contagious and she calls the festival a ‘celebration’,
which is exactly what it is.

   More than once I found myself saying, as I sat on a wall on the bay looking out over the lake, ‘This is why I read poetry, not because it will help my own writing, but because it shares. It enables me, reading one of Shakespeare’s sonnets in England to share a little of the same experience with someone reading it in Italy, Japan, Scotland. Anywhere!’ There’s something liberating about this thought. And it didn’t feel overly Romantic or pretentious to say it; I didn’t feel I had to prove any supposed credentials to myself. Maybe we all worry about adding to the pile of poetry in the world, but do we add to it because, rather than concentrating on writing
good poems, we’re trying too hard to be called ‘Poets’? In Orta, it’s enough just to enjoy the poetry.

   In some ways the festival feels like a rich and wonderful poem
itself: the readings might easily be a few short stanzas pulling together
references from all over the world, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Makvala Gonashvill to Montale, the structure a lovely, loose free-verse of workshops and talks, closing finally on a series of readings at the twelve chapels at Sacro Monte. All this set in an area steeped in literary history: the lake has inspired Robert Browning and Balzac, and Nietzche’s ‘Thus Spake Zarathrusta’ is dated Von Orta an. When we read a poem, we always talk about the reader ‘taking their own baggage to it’. Maybe, if Poetry On The Lake is a
poem, the kind of baggage you should take to it has a handle and a
small set of wheels. (details page 36)