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

Despite the name, poetry nottingham (58/4) is impressively international, and a steady editorial hand ensures that this is a consistently enjoyable selection. If you prefer accessible and competent to startling and knotty, you will certainly find your bearings more easily here than in Succour, a new publication from the Creative and Critical Writing MA at Sussex University. The unifying theme of ‘exiles’ is imaginatively treated in both prose and poetry, but the experimental tendencies are not always successful . There are at least two pieces here which I actively hate (and I’m sure the authors are confident enough to prefer such a strong reaction to indifference). But whatever I think of the content, it’s good to see new projects launched with style and commitment.

HQ (30) is quite happy to take a political stance, both in the editorial and in the slightly annoying ‘quotes’ that pepper its pages. But although the editor writes that poets have a ‘duty’ to speak out in defence of civil liberties, the poems here are not explicitly political. Indeed, their focus on the personal and intimate is almost claustrophobic at times. Breaths of air come from John Sewell’s robust but tender sonnets, Daniel Healy’s economical ‘Sunday Morning’ and Robert Morley’s playful ‘A bird’s a verb’: ‘A noun’s an egg, a bird’s a verb/adjectives are speckles on the shell.’

Connections (Spring 2005) and The Rialto (57) both look at translation, with the former containing a substantial themed section of essays and poems, and the latter introducing an extract from Sean O’Brien’s new version of Dante’s Inferno. In fact, Connections is packed with good things, from Billy Childish on ‘disco TV’ to Andrew McGuinness on Raymond Carver to Mary Michaels on smell in poetry.  The Rialto is nearly as fat, but much more focused on poems, of which my favourite is ‘The Model Shop’ by F.J. Williams: ‘A packet of bus stops, the instant ivy/And the smell of toyshop varnish.’

Editor’s privilege sees Ambit (180) beginning with an extract from Martin Bax’s new novel, but the eye for other people’s work is also as strong as ever. Ralph Steadman’s drawings of the late Hunter S. Thompson are fabulous, of course, Matthew Licht’s story ‘Just a Touch’ is a laconic take on sex, jealousy and blindness, and there is promising work from young poet Aruna Nair.

Staple 62: Ten Years of Small Press Poets: an Alternative Generation
Staple 62 presents AltGen, a small press counterpoint to the NextGen poetry promotion. Although in the poetry world even the ‘big’ publishers are small, it was felt by some that NextGen excluded the smallest with its prohibitive £600 fee for promoting a nominated poet. Staple recognises that the lifeblood of poetry is in the small presses, and their selection of poets gives well-deserved space to the fresh, innovative voices to be found behind the glossy facade of concepts like NextGen.  (RP)

Helena Nelson likes chapbooks, partly because ‘ordinary people can afford to buy a good few of them each year’. Nelson’s new magazine, Sphinx, is a celebration of chapbook poetry which would in an ideal world go a long way towards encouraging ordinary people to do just that, with selected poems, reviews, and profiles of noted chapbook publishers. But if it’s not in Waterstones... (RP)

Happenstance Press, 21 Hatton Green, Glenrothes, Fife KY7 4SD
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