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

This will be the first, and last, editorial in Shearsman.

The magazine will appear roughly quarterly, and I shall guarantee a minimum of 6 or 7 issues. Whether it continues thereafter will depend on the response a “respected” magazine with no readers is wasting its writers’ time and work. So, if you, as a reader, like the magazine, the most useful thing you can do is to subscribe or get a friend to subscribe. An old song, but one worth singing over and over.

Each issue will take a similar form to this one three or four large-scale sections on single writers, and several translations, as well as the normal “anthology” type combination of short selections from several writers. Poetry is the main aim of Shearsman, but prose will not be ignored, - either creative or critical.

There is also a chapbook series, running under the title “Blue Guitar Books”, which will run concurrently with the magazine. The first two booklets available are by David Jaffin and Claude Royet-Journoud, two writers who will also appear in the magazine. Further books are planned, but various constraints (time, money) could prevent the series running its desired course.

Lastly, as a service to my contributors, I offer a list of all their most recent publications, and the distribution outlets from which they are most easily obtainable. The only way to keep literary publishing alive is to buy the books. As a further aid I offer a list of selected titles that I recommend, & places to get them from. Support the writer, the press, the distributor. You can do all that by buying a book. Simple isn’t it ?