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

Don’t let the post catch you...
Experience with submissions for SOUTH 30
has shown that unacceptable postal delays are
now an inescapable fact of life – for example,
an overstamped first class mailing from London
took five days to reach us in Poole. An 18th
century stage coach might have done better. We
therefore urge contributors to post their
submissions as soon as possible, and well
before the published deadline.

For previous issues we have tried to make
allowances by clearing the PO Box a few days
after the deadline. But this is to accept, not
overcome, the inefficiency of the postal service,
ultimately at some inconvenience to SOUTH
and those who submit to it.

These days of grace will therefore cease, and
from November 30, 2004, submission deadlines
will be strictly applied.

We feel this is in the interest of all contributors,
particularly the vast majority who do not leave
it until the last few days. As postal delays
worsen, it becomes clearer that allowing days
of grace merely leads to knock-on delays in
starting the selection process and notifying the
result. The basic problem remains unresolved,
and the way round it is in the hands of
individual contributors.

Passport Pictures
While SOUTH poets are celebrating in
Bournemouth on National Poetry Day, the 2004
batch of 15 Foyle Young Poets of the Year will
be receiving their awards – including books and
a free Arvon course at Lumb Bank.

Passport Pictures, the Foyle Young Poets
anthology for 2003, was a Poetry Book Society
pamphlet choice earlier this year, with free
copies available from the Poetry Society, 22
Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX in return
for a C5 sae bearing 34p postage.

These poems from writers aged between 11 and
18 are quite different from what one might
expect in a conventional school magazine. But
how many of those are edited by Fiona Sampson
and Philip Gross, or by Moniza Alvi and Mario
Petrucci, the 2003 and 2004 judges
respectively? No doubt Mary Chen’s hot
blooded.my.my.my. would raise eyebrows in the
average staff room, with its Plath-like evocation
of sexual longing: Innumerable stars, you are/
my only companion [sic],/ cold and asking to
be slapped.

One isn’t looking for perfection – too many lines
end with ‘the’ and there are some borrowings
(‘we are beginning/ afresh// afresh’) – but for
evidence of promise, and of that sense of
newness and discovery that doesn’t always
survive the discovery of a new poet, Passport
Pictures won’t disappoint.

While on the subject of Poetry Society-related
matters, we would like to congratulate Denise
Bennett, a SOUTH Foundation member and
regular contributor, upon winning the first £300
Hamish Canham Prize, for the best poem of the
year by a Poetry Society member published in
Poetry News, with her poem Changing Shape.

Light’s List of Literary Magazines
now in its 19th annual edition, is an ongoing
and meticulous labour of love that seeks to
provide up to date details of over 1,400 British,
American and Canadian magazines that publish
creative writing and artwork in English. It costs
only £3 including postage (cheques payable to
John Light) from Photon Press, 37 The
Meadows, Berwick-upon-Tweed TD15 1NY.

Ver Poets
hold evening and daytime meetings in the St
Albans area and have both local and postal
members. New members can send six poems
for a free critique. The annual subscription is
£15. More details from Daphne Schiller on
01727 864898 ([email protected]).

SOUTH launch readings
offer free admission to foundation members,
who may each bring one guest free of charge.
Admission is also free to a poet who has been
invited to take part in the reading, but not to
that poet’s guest, unless the poet in question is
also a SOUTH Foundation Member (which is,
we are happy to note, quite often the case). We
are pointing this out because there seems to have
been some confusion on the issue at the SOUTH
29 launch reading at Chichester. The neatest
solution for any poet is to become a Foundation
Member oneself. Whether reading or not, the
poet (and the poet’s guest) can then be sure of
free admission to every launch reading.