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

I remember when I first thought a poem was amazing. I was six, sitting cross-legged on the mat in front of our class teacher, who announced she was going to read us a part of a very good and very long poem called ‘The Song of Hiawatha’. (I’m pretty sure it was the section known and anthologised as ‘Hiawatha‘s Childhood’ as the lines, when I re-read them, resonate strongly). We were instructed to sit very still and listen carefully. An incorrigibly fidgety child, I wasn’t looking forward to Hiawatha or his childhood. And then she started reading and within minutes I was transported to a luminous, enchanting world; ‘Bright before it beat the water/Beat the clear and sunny water/Beat the shining big-sea-water.’ Those gorgeous repetitions, the strong, insistent beat, that crisp, clear language…genius, as far as I was concerned. I actually managed to sit still for the duration.

At my Girls’ Grammar school, one of my happiest memories is of two visiting poets, (one bearded, one not, one tall, one short, both male, names forgotten - whoever you are, thank you!), as part of the Poetry Society’s/W.H. Smith’s ‘Poets in Schools’ scheme, set up by the generous, inspirational Kit Wright. (I’ve since discussed this happy hiatus in my inauspicious school career with Kit and told him the difference it made to me). I realised then that poets didn’t have to be 1) Gloomy/portentous and 2) Dead, which was a cheering epiphany. These guys wrote about their lives, what they wanted, what they feared; what they’d lost. It was honest, raw, accessible; they wrote poems in the language and patterns of ordinary speech - it sounded real. I was all for gritty reality, by that stage. I wrote some angst-ridden poems about death and unrequited love and they were published in an anthology of Young Writing, now mercifully out of print. But in writing my own poems, I felt empowered; I wasn’t being asked to regurgitate someone else’s work - I could spit out my own words, thank you.

But I can’t honestly say that, as I approached adulthood, I ‘decided’ to be a poet. I didn’t write anything imaginative during my late teens/early twenties; the need to do it died down; I was busy being in and out of love, which I’ve written about since, but at that time I guess I didn’t feel the need to express my life on paper. I took a degree in Literature/The History of Ideas and loved it, and I’ve never regretted studying for its own sake. I don’t regret not writing my own poems and stories then, either, because clearly I didn’t have anything urgent to say, or I’d have tried to say it. Spending three years reading great literature and immersing myself in the study of radical, world-changing ideas was a great investment; we shouldn’t underestimate the value of reading and ‘filling the well’; with first-rate material. When I left University I worked as a Researcher/Information Officer for various swanky London companies - and, bored out of my skull/creatively unfulfilled penning such memorable gems as ‘Property Values and Transport and Communication Links - Canary Wharf’ I joined an ILEA evening class in creative writing and started writing stories and poems again. And felt as though I’d woken from a long, drugged, unpleasant sleep. Moving to Brighton, I joined another writing group, and felt that I’d resumed an exhilarating relationship with my first true love - my imagination.

Then I had two children in quick succession and could barely manage a note to the milkman for the first few years - but, whenever they slept, I read. I snuck off to Sussex University to do a Creative Writing certificate course (on which, all these years later, I now teach) when my kids were young; the joy and relief of reading/writing stories where the characters weren’t dim-looking dogs or talking trains was enormous. I enrolled on a strange, hybrid MA in Language, The Arts and Education, most of which could be done in one’s own creative writing. I’d go and write the odd academic essay and lots of short stories for a year, I decided; bliss. Then, at the induction meeting, the course was spelled out in detail, as described in the course outline, which somehow, in my excitement, I’d failed to read properly. The creative component required two genres. Bugger. Well, I didn’t have time or headspace for a novel, so it would have to be poetry. I used to enjoy writing poems, didn’t I?….

It’s embarrassing to admit I became a published poet ‘accidentally’ - and also disingenuous, of course - it took lots of hard work, and getting it wrong, and having to educate myself, very rapidly. I was so lucky to meet Carole Satyamurti, the wonderfully generous and informative writer-in-residence at Sussex University at that time. She organised writing workshops and arranged for real, proper, published poets - Sue Wicks, Mario Petrucci, Vicki Feaver - to give readings. They clearly loved what they did, and read work I could relate to, and I dived headlong into contemporary poetry, realising I had hardly any idea of what it was. I’d borrow half a dozen poetry collections at a time from the library, and devour them with the zeal and dedication of a new convert. Carole published my first poem (the subject matter was my urge to lick my newborn son’s head clean after birth) in Soundings, a sociology journal, and after that I found the courage (with support from good friends/good poets Ros Barber and Jackie Wills) to send poems off to magazines and competitions. To my surprise, I started to be published quite widely, and to have some modest success in competitions.

Poetry became my drug of choice and I started to hang out with other addicts, attending workshops and readings and even going to Poetry Festivals. In 1999 I was a first-stage winner in the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition and the resulting pamphlet, The New Bride, was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. (Since then, I’ve been on several shortlists, but I’ve never won a major prize. Ros Barber and I joke that my first book should have been called The New Bridesmaid, as that’s the position at the celebration I occupy most often… )

In 2003, The Butcher’s Hands was published by Smith/Doorstop and 2004 was an interesting year - I was selected both for the Mslexia Top Ten New Women Poets list, and for the PBS/Arts Council Next Generation promotion. Both were completely unexpected; pleasant, and anxiety-inducing, in equal measure. At about the same time, I decided I couldn’t carry on writing about suburban perverts; I needed to evolve as a poet, take risks, be brave, and I wrote some radically new stuff. And almost without fail, every poem I sent out to journals/magazines/competitions either disappeared without trace or didn’t find a home. I felt as though I was chucking a boomerang into the air, waiting for it to curve its way back to me, often with a little note attached - ‘Sorry, I don’t like this new material. Preferred what you were doing before’. It was a bleak period, all the more embarrassing because it was assumed I’d Made It and was Doing Well. I’ll always be grateful to the poet-friends who told me to stop snivelling, pull myself together, write more poems and try again. I did; and, slowly, the new work started to find homes. My latest collection, Lip, is more surreal, more concerned with fantasy and desire than the earlier work and it wasn’t an easy book to write - but I’m glad I didn’t give into my own insecurities and abandon ship in 2004.

Someone asked me recently if I considered myself ‘a serious poet.’ How does anyone answer that?! Serious in terms of subject matter, commitment, demeanour? I take poetry seriously when I’m writing it, and although I hope it’s darkly funny at times it’s quite often just….dark. But I think what they were really getting at was the question of ‘the full-time poet’ versus ‘the occasional poet.’ That’s really hard, because there are times when I’m so immersed in writing poems I can’t do much else, and months when I don’t write a word of poetry, and don’t need to. I’m writing fiction at the moment and have written very few poems this year; perhaps this means I’m a lightweight, not fully committed to the cause. I prefer to believe that there’s very little point writing a poem unless you need to; poems that are skilfully written, technically competent, well-behaved observations, with no real risk or punch, seem pretty pointless to me. I seem to write more poetry when I’m anxious, puzzled, destabilised in some way; whereas prose flows better when I’m calmer and more organised. Tim Liardet says, ‘Good poems come from disturbance.’ In my case, I think that’s right.