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

I am writing of the Ronald we knew as a poet, Magma’s Treasurer for its first ten years, and an incisive and often very funny contributor to Laurie Smith’s City Lit poetry class for many years. There were, of course, many other ‘Ronalds’, some of whom we gleaned from his approach to poetry, his own and others. In his professional life, he had been a surveyor, and he was also a noted expert on fritillaria and orchids, was much travelled and had a strong appreciation of music.

   As Magma’s Treasurer, Ronald was prudent, meticulous and clear-sighted. He “told it as it was” and put a small poetry magazine’s early financial insecurity steadily into perspective. Many poetry magazines do not reach their tenth anniversary, as Magma did last year. Ronald made a huge contribution to Magma’s survival and growth. He was businesslike, but also great fun to work with.

   Ronald hated pretension and pomposity. He was utterly unsentimental, but also had a deep love and understanding of the natural world and the cycles of nature. In early September last year, Ronald and his family held a delightful garden party and poetry reading at their home in Warlingham to mark the publication of his poems, Sliding Down Banisters: Poems of a Lifetime. Seeing how his wooden house and the wonderful garden that he and his wife Erna had created blended with the surrounding countryside, his commitment to nature became even clearer than before.

   Ronald and Erna undertook many trips to Turkey and to the Middle East in search of fritillaria. One of their finds was new to botany and is named after them – Fritillaria frankorum. On one such trip, in Lebanon, they were held at gunpoint by Hizbollah and then given a cup of tea. One imagines that Ronald did not make a fuss.

   Unsentimentality and love of nature were both evident at Ronald’s funeral. He chose a woodland burial where a young tree would be planted over him and absorb him as nutrient. Responding to his resolute atheism, the committal consisted of reminiscences by family and friends and readings of his poems.

   Ronald’s writing became more brave, taut and spare as he grew older. Irreverent, too. He was not afraid to write about the end of life, and of death – his own. The last poem in Sliding Down Banisters begins:

     Don’t look in the next room,
     I’m not there. I’ve ceased upon the midnight
     And gone to see if there is a rub,
     I’m passé, I’ve pissed off and
     Won’t be around much anymore…

   Later, in the same poem, he wrote: “Idle, untidy and banal, but I dodged / Solemnity.”

   We miss him, though I can imagine him snorting in amused or affectionate derision at such a thought.