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

The Fine Line, lucapacijürgenghebrezgiabiher,
no ISBN, £3.33 recurring (it’s a joke), Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh, EH3 6HN, email r.freeserve. co.uk

This witty, allusive and punning little chapbook (The Fine Line) adds itself to the sub-genre of London-Lit, the author making her / his nods and references to predecessors, Eliot and Iain Sinclair in particular. It made me wonder if any city other than New York, perhaps, could evoke such books as these, with their mix of introspection and observation. So much is happening in its pages it is difficult to capture it all in a short review, but I can map out the main features. Periodically, the syntax explodes or assumes novel patterns, or the typography changes font style, case and clarity. Every page holds a different style each with its different tone and its particular angle. I was hard pushed to decide whether or not I was reading one poem, or a collection of individual poems linked by a common theme, and did it matter which? There is a witty equation. And the whole is interlarded with allusions and quotes (some French, German and medieval Italian would help you). Is all this purely gratuitous? I think not – the devices cleverly support or emphasise the text, though it is perhaps a tad too jokey. Is it pretentious? No again – ‘delightful’ would be my word. What about the writing? Spare and precise throughout, and often memorable

life waves its empty hat / a barren mind / a tunnel night / a moistened
finger holing the sky / thunders and lights.

Yes, this is a London well worth a visit, that will give you more with each re-visit

London / Forever subsists / past the unbending sky / and jitters of swift leptons / charging Westminster / new heaven new earth / mixed towards futile vainglory / yet to come / the zeitgeist