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

FIREDOORS - Neil Wenborn
Rockingham Press, 11 Musley Lane, Ware, Herts SG12 7EN
72 pages £7.95

BACKWORK - Ann Drysdale
Peterloo Poets, The Old Chapel, Sand Lane, Calstock, Cornwall
PL18 9QX 88 pages £7.95

TRAVELLING TO THE FISH ORCHARDS - Robert Seatter
Seren, 38-40 Nolton Street, Bridgend CF31 3BN 72 pages £6.95

SECTIONED - Penelopeanne Dalgleish
Flarestack, 41 Buckley’s Green, Alvechurch, Birmingham B48 7NG
32 pages £3.00

THROUGH THE TELESCOPE BACKWARDS - Moorside Writers
Moorside Writers, Chesterfield 80 pages

Neil Wenborn uses his historian’s eye for detail in many of these exquisitely crafted poems. Firedoors includes atmospheric poems about the Fens which skilfully draw in the reader. Two monologues give the father and son of Mozart a voice and are entertaining at the same time as being informative. Other poems cover a wide range of subjects. Some need, and deserve, slow, careful reading but there’s variety here with lighter poems like the one about three trained snails. I particularly like the title poem, which is effective on its literal level and also as a metaphor for a relationship: Behind me, one by one, I could hear them wheezing/ abruptly shut, the firedoors that seal this passage;/ ahead, in their glass, a dark reflection, closing/ with every step, condensed to my own image. Another that stands out is the joyous and pacey Line Dancing at The King’s in which A siege of jubilant children takes/ the bouncy castle and villagers join in the line dance...Whims take hold like brief traditions/ and lose their grip again to the life of the dance.

Backwork is a strange book. It starts with 18 lines of supposedly funny but actually unamusing doggerel that would have been good had it ended after line 4. Fortunately, the first poem is unrepresentative. It screens well-crafted poems, some with hilarious images, others provoking thought and emotion. In Adult Education the male yoga instructor (The Peacock) struts among his class of women panting on their knees/ Tricked into the willing-bitch position. I haven’t read a poem about a turd before (sheltered life!) so I enjoyed Miaow, There Goes Mr. Brown (particularly the dedication). In complete contrast, I could feel the hurt in the eight-poem sequence Palliative Procedures about living with dying. The second poem in this sequence, Prognosis, ends: Only the cold mischief of statistics/ had any mileage left in it and so/ here we are holding hands across the wound,/ feeling it all slipping away, clutching/ at randoms, variables and the tails of curves. Ann Drysdale lives on a Welsh mountainside and describes herself as ‘poet and peasant’. Her nature poems do not disappoint. Take these lines from Gathering Frogs: Now they begin their song, the throaty alleluias/ Rising like tossed cloth caps. I enjoyed the title poem, which is about mining, and also liked the cover with its Beryl Cook painting of two women looking to engage in a different kind of backwork.

Travelling to the fish orchards is an accomplished, image-charged first collection by Robert Seatter, who has won many major prizes, including the London Poetry Competition, 2000. Many are personal and I liked these best. Last Family Holiday captures the awkwardness and boredom felt by many teenagers on family holidays, particularly with the diary entry: Today we had tinned peaches/ and Ambrosia creamed rice...yesterday’s car trip was endless.../ how easy is drowning, and does it hurt? In Hipsters
the poet has more fun with the teenage embarrassment of shopping
for something trendy with mother in tow. As a woman, I appreciated the insight offered by Seatter in his poems about relationships - more than many male poets reveal and completely devoid of sentimentality, which is a real bonus. Some poems are wonderfully surreal, like Water Tank with God gurgling in the cistern, and First Marriage with the couple ending up on the mantelpiece watching the furniture float away. The book is in two sections, the first covering a variety of subjects and ending with the brilliant The Tightrope Walker’s Retirement. The second, shorter section, covers the poet’s time working in Milan.

Penelopeanne Dalgleish died unexpectedly in December 2002 at the age of 25. For someone so young, Penelopeanne had an amazing amount going for her in the world of poetry, much of it down to her own boundless enthusiasm. I was just getting to know her through the Fulcrum Poetry project she was starting with two colleagues and found her creative energy and drive to get poetry a wider audience inspirational. Sectioned is one long poem in 26 parts plus prologue and epilogue. It introduces several characters, principally Sparky Muir who has danger in blue eyes which/ have seen everything in fourteen/ years but have never bridged the Forth. It tells of his descent through LSD, heroin, burglary and prostitution to a death which could have been suicide and the speaker’s parallel move
towards institutionalised insanity. Sectioned is written in a pithy, modern style and is moving without being sentimental.

Moorside Writers formed as a group in 1997 from a creative writing class held at Hurst House, Chesterfield. This book is a platform for the nine members to show what they can do in a variety of styles. Consequently, it is unlikely that the reader will like everything in it but there should be at least something for everyone. Dorothy Cooke’s fond look at her father appealed to me as did Maureen Groarke’s humorous poem from the point of view of the wife of a mountain climber and mother of a two-year-old furniture climber. Sheila Cheesman’s poem about an old man working in
his garden also deserves a mention for its touching simplicity.