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

Scarberry Hill
The Rialto, 2001
PO Box 309, Aylsham, Norwich NR1 6LN
ISBN 09527444-3-0
£7.95

Josephine Dickinson

I grew up in South London but am rooted now in this place Alston, beloved of Auden, who ever kept its map on his wall. I aspire to the qualities of the shepherdpoet, indeed it is my e-mail address. My sense of vocation as a poet emerged after I became profoundly deaf overnight at the age of six and I started reading and imitating poetry. I lost a physical sense but started seeing and hearing the miraculous. I read Classics at Oxford, then became a music teacher and composer after study with Michael Finnissy and Richard Barrett. Life events brought me to Alston. One day Michael Mackmin wrote and asked me if I had enough poems to make a book. I sent him 100 poems. He chose 60. And this is 'Scarberry Hill'. Not all my poems are about sheep. Current interests include mythology and fairy tales, space travel and cosmology. I was stunned by last year's transit of the Sun by Venus and very much look forward to 2012.

Michael Mackmin, Editor of The Rialto
The Rialto’s first book was How it Turned Out, a selection of poems by Frank Redpath. This was in 1996. The project gave me a taste for book publishing. The magazine had always existed to help new poets, so publishing first collections by poets appearing in the magazine seemed a logical step. We had a small grant to help with the Redpath and I got R.A.B. help with the next two – Andrew Waterhouse’s In and Emily Wills’ Diverting the Sea. For much of 2003-04 we were working on a Lottery application that we hope will put the collections onto a sounder footing. We now have the money to produce two a year for the next three years. I’m glad that Josephine’s book has been selected; it’s a wonderful evocation of the North, people and beasts, the rise of hills, stone walls and muddy gateways.