Migrant
This first issue of this prose supplement to Painted, spoken pays homage to Migrant, a little magazine that ran for only eight issues from July 1959 to September 1960, but was arguably one of the most important British poetry magazines of the last century.
Started by Gael Turnbull in America with Michael Shayer as contributing editor in England, the magazine and its book imprint became a place where new American, Canadian, Scottish, English and other work would find enthusiastic publication and be distributed among key poets of the time.
In the course of curating an exhibition on Migrant for the British Library I learned more and more about this remarkable magazine, one of the first places that Black Mountain Poetry was first promulgated in Britain and a prescient publisher of the poetry of Charles Tomlinson, Roy Fisher, Edwin Morgan and others. It’s later press published Ian Hamilton Finlay’s first book of poems, an early Edwin Morgan booklet, and Roy Fisher’s City, as well as the work of one of the most popular performance poets of the day, Pete Brown.
I was lucky to be in contact with Jill Turnbull, Gael’s widow, who was able to provide a good deal of information and who I have the opportunity to very much thank here. Through Jill I made contact with several of those associated with Migrant at the time and was given firsthand accounts by Jonnie Turnbull (Gael’s first wife) and Michael Shayer, which I reproduce here with their kind permission. I am also very grateful to Roy Fisher and to Alexandra Sayer, my research assistant on the exhibition, Migrant and the Possibility of Poetry. The exhibition runs from January 19th to March 25th 2007 and coincides with the publication of British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: a history and bibliography of ‘little magazines’, compiled by myself and David Miller (British Library and Oak Knoll).
A contextual account of the groundbreaking nature of Migrant is given in my article, “Migrant the Magnificent” in PN Review Jan-Feb 2007.
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magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The