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

The French, Local Information, Pure, 2003

Hefner appear to be no more, but Darren Hayman’s lyrics still have their idiosyncracy, charm and occasional waspishness. The electronica, sometimes Bontempi-cheeky, sometimes Dr Who gloopish, takes some getting used to after the guitar-led highpoints of the previous band (the album We Love the City especially), but the narratives are as beguiling, funny, and melancholy as ever.

The Libertines, Up the Bracket, Rough Trade, 2002.

Breathtaking live, where the give and take between songwriter-guitarists Doherty and Barât is fascinating, the band’s strangely structured songs lose little of their light and shade on stage. The energy goes beyond athleticism, and the band leave this record as something which is as close as you’ll get to seeing them before they combust (hopefully not before the release of their second album, which I understand has already been recorded).

The Servant, [Untitled], Prolifica, 2003.

Office anonymity, relationships in the tally of takeaways, doubts that love might just be seratonin alone – The Servant, with a sound reminiscent of Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians, serve up the promise of a music of… romantic materialism? A lyric, from singer and writer Dan Black, is printed in this issue, with kind permission of Prolifica Records.

Stephen Watts, Gramsci & Caruso, Praha: Periplum, 2003. 80-86624-16-1. pp164. Czech and English parallel text.

As well as bringing earlier poems back into print, new poems are collected here, including “Birds of East London” and “What 31 Children Said About Their Dreams”. These show Watts in expansive form, folding a poetry of praise back into each piece at the same time as finding introspection and loving detail a source of energy, pushing the poetry on, forwards and out into the world. Beautifully produced, in a handsize square format.

John Welch, The Eastern Boroughs, Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2004. 0-907562-43-4. pp145

Poems in which a speaking voice appears very slowly to be considering what it is saying, speaking with neither absolute authority but not quite tentativeness either, open to the process of deliberation and chance in inscription, with poems about painting, about the self, family, and eastend communities.