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

Our web master, Tim Kindberg, introduces us to poem-surfing

Poetry is abundant on the Internet. It is read from and even created on web pages, discussed in electronic news groups, submitted and transmitted in emails. That proliferation represents both the weaknesses and the strengths of the Internet as a medium. A cynic might say that it makes publication (of poems and thoughts about poems) too easy; that, being often sans editor, what the Internet facilitates in many cases is the sentimental, the uncrafted, the jotted verse or comment dashed off before pressing the ‘send’ button. The medium can be used instantaneously - thoughtlessly - and indeed there is much that is mediocre making the electrons flow in wires and cathode-ray tubes. But its ease of use (once mastered) together with its reach also mean that the Internet can be a useful resource for reading, writing, publishing or analyzing poetry. If you haven’t explored for poetry on the Internet before, here are some beginnings you might try. And if you have explored before, you may find here some useful alternative routes into its nexus.

Take the Web. Magma, like many other magazines, has for some years had a web presence containing information about our publication and a selection of poems and articles from the current and previous editions. That increases our accessibility and it broadens the readership to millions, potentially. (OK, so currently it’s more like tens of thousands: that in itself is a huge extension from the circulation obtainable by a set of volunteers with limited funds and a local branch of Kopy-Kwik). No self-respecting poetry magazine - or literary archive or poetry activist or major fan - would do without a website nowadays. And that’s all the better for readers, for researchers, for the curious, and indeed for all the browsing wanderers jiggling in their castored chairs. For writers, perhaps the Internet’s single most important benefit is the ease with which websites, through their submission guidelines and email addresses, make it possible to submit poems to magazines all over the world.

For a directory of some of what is out there on the Web, try the Poetry Kit (www.poetrykit.org), which is replete with links to poetry resources of many kinds, from writing courses through details of publishers to poems. Yahoo has listings at dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Literature/Poetry/. There is a very useful set of literary references maintained by Tim Love, at www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/lit.html. His pages include references to paper and web-based poetry magazines, sites dedicated to individual poets, competitions, publishers and discussion groups. While there recently, I found an impressive site of links to American Poetry pages, maintained by Al Filreis at the University of Pennsylvania (www.english.upenn.edu/ ~aflireis/88/home.html). None of these sites can claim to be comprehensive. Each has its own method and rationale for collecting links. It pays to consult several sites when trying to obtain a sense of the big picture.

In fact, many sites are parochial in their content, reflecting the general lack of a tendency for the Internet to homogenise us, despite its global reach. And for that we should be thankful. Perhaps you are after some specific information. Living in California and interested in local readings? Try Poetry Flash’s calendar of poetry events (www.poetryflash.org). Want to find out how to submit to Poetry London? Go to www.poetrylondon.co.uk. Forgotten which edition of Poetry Review had that article on ‘Meeting Ted Hughes’? Visit the Poetry Society (www.poetrysoc.com) and follow the link to Poetry Review. Want to sample some fine contemporary American poetry? Navigate to www.poetrymagazine.org.

The Web changes rapidly - some seven million pages are added a day. Search engines are the key to finding the latest resources germane to your particular quest. Who has poetry by Billy Collins? Take yourself down to google.com or your favourite search engine and type that name into the oblong with the flashing cursor. And, while you’re at it, why not enter your own name to find out if you have a namesake living in Paris, Texas. Maybe s/he likes Verlaine, too.

Which brings us to the possibilities for interaction with others: email, the chat-rooms, the newsgroups, the programs that take your words and intertwine them with those of others to produce a hyper-poem (e.g. atlas.csd.net/~cantelow/cgi-bin/poem_view.pl/pyro). They are all potentially means of conducting discussion, review or poetic creation. The Internet, of course, is no more likely to put you in touch with someone with whom you share a spiritual poetic bond than if you were to experiment with engaging fellow travellers on the bus home. But it can help you to find people with whom you share an interest in some poetic realm or enterprise.

For example, Zeugma (www.melicreview.com/zeugma/) is a web site for “poets who discuss and analyze each other’s work on an advanced level”. You have to apply for membership. If the procedure for joining (which even indudes some legalese) puts you off - and even if it doesn’t you might want to participate in a completely informal poetry forum such as the newsgroup rec.arts.poetry (which you can access via the Web at (www.deja.com). There you can submit poems for your peers to review and enter into discussions. With any newsgroup, email list or chat room, the quality of the postings tend to be highly variable. You may receive a thoughtful response to your poetry, but you may equally be faced with irrelevant contributions or even subjected to blandishments or barbs from someone who feels the need to play one of those annoying roles that groups foster. Of course, one encounters those people in real (as opposed to virtual) writing classes. But many who are not used to electronic media make careless comments or incautious interpretations that, unmediated by body language and other types of context from the real world, lead to sometimes heated misunderstandings. You can always engage in one-to-one email exchanges with those who seem constructive. Corresponding with strangers from across the world can be fun, but what about those you know? Two poet-friends of mine who live some hundreds of miles apart regularly use email to exchange poems and ideas, and find it enormously helpful and pleasurable.

Seeing so many formatted words splashed across the screen raises the question of whether the Web is more than a medium, and has its own, indigenous type of poetry. Some espouse hypertext - the linked structure of Web pages - as a non-linear, jump-cutting form in its own right. You can judge for yourself at, for example, raven.ubalt.edu/guests/alphaweb/ and www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/hypelink.htm. Then there is concrete poetry that takes advantage of screen layout - for example, motion poems (www.trinp.org/Poet/ComP/MPoems.htm). Sites such as these can be fun and you may want to draw upon them to stir your writing processes.

If you are a relative beginner, here is not the place to instruct you in how to use the Internet to further your engagement with poetry - for surfers, there is, unsurprisingly, no substitute for getting feet wet. Those who feel the need could always consult one of those thick books that pack the computer-section shelves on how to - well, do the electronic equivalent of writing an address on an envelope (did they used to have “sealing for ye dummies”, or “ye idiot’s guide to holding ye quill”?). Personally, this author hopes you will trust your intuitive powers as browsers and fearlessly dial up, set forth upon the sea of poetry, direction where the surfboard presses. You will get lost and bewildered and your sensibilities will many times be disappointed or offended. But, with some perseverance, you will catch some stimulating waves as well.

Oh, and if you find yourself frustrated, you might calm your mind by playing with some magnetic poetry at www.prominence.com/java/poetry/. Feeling fluttery after some hours in front of the screen? Check out www.batbox.org/poetry.html. Go on, make a night of it.