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

Michael Lee (see also the Letters page in this issue) is rightly pleased with the success of the Poems in the Waiting Room leaflets. The circulation is 22,500 and it’s distributed to over a thousand NHS units - which means that ‘as well as the most widely read poetry publication, PitWR is perhaps the most extensive arts in health programme in the NHS.’ Potential contributors are reminded that poems need to be appropriate to NHS waiting rooms i.e work that will alleviate, not induce, stress: it might help to know that Michael particularly liked Julie Lumsden’s poem in The Rialto 64. The address is 34 Beechwood Avenue, Kew Gardens, Richmond TW9 4DE.

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Paul Stubbs, the Norwich born, Norwich based, poet has a new collection out. He’s followed up his first book The Theological Museum with The Icon Maker, which is available both as a very handsome hardback and as a paperback (Arc, ISBN 9781905614 982 or 517). Paul is cross with the current editorship of The Rialto because, although we published his early poems and gave him his first public reading, we’ve been a bit cautious of the recent work. I think he takes this as evidence of our feeblemindedness. Many poets writing today are lightweights as far as Paul is concerned. His preoccupations are cosmic and visceral and he pushes the language around with great vigour striving to achieve with words something like the effect Francis Bacon, one of his heroes, achieves with paint. A lot of people support his work - he’s had grants from Arts Council East and the Society of Authors, and Alice Oswald and Matt Simpson have written blurb for the back cover. Paul will be reading, as will Will Stone, who provided the cover image for The Icon Maker, at the King’s Lynn Poetry Festival (26 -28 September, www.lynnlitfests.com or send an s.a.e. to Anthony Ellis, 19, Tuesday Market Place, King’s Lynn, PE30 1JW).

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The King’s Lynn Festival is not as widely known about as it deserves to be. There’s always someone startling to discover - last year it was the brilliant Tiffany Atkinson. And they have rather wonderful discussions as well as readings - for example this year, on the Sunday, the poets will be discussing ‘Which poets since 1945 will still be read in 2083?’ Audience participation is encouraged. Fantastic list of readers as well.

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The poet and photographer Jonathan Williams died, aged 79, earlier this summer. He lived in the summer in Dentdale, one of the planet’s quiet places, and wintered in North Carolina. Among his 50 books the 1971 Cape Goliard The Loco Logodaedalist In Situ, which has ‘embellishments’ by Joe Tilson, is a particular treasure. As is the 1979 Coracle Press Portrait Photographs, a nice square book with pictures of all kinds of heroes - Denise Levertov, Basil Bunting, Thomas Merton, RB Kitaj etc - all looking young and inspiring. Williams was fond of prefacing his books with a selection of quotations. Here’s a couple juxtaposed in The Loco etc: ‘It is a very great mistake to suppose, as a few English cooks still do, that spaghetti and macaroni should be soaked in water before cooking’ - Elizabeth David ‘I thought men like that shot themselves’ - King George V.

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A couple of books with pictures and poems juxtaposed. The first is Ink on Paper, also a square book, edited by Colette Bryce (Mudfog Press/mima ISBN 9781899503766). This is the result of a project at the Middlesborough Institutue of Modern Art: poets were invited to the gallery and encouraged to be inspired by the works therein, and there were then writing workshops run by Colette with Paul Batchelor. It’s a good advertisement for the Institute, which has a very catholic collection - Tracey Emin, Conrad Atkinson, Ivon Hitchens, LS Lowry etc., etc. The poems are OK too.

The second is Pure Reason, a selection of poems by Nikos Stangos (Thames and Hudson, ISBN 9780500513835). Nikos was a commissioning editor and director at Penguin books and Thames and Hudson for most of his professional life. There’s a frontispiece by Howard Hodgkin and pretty nearly everybody who is famous in the field of contemporary art seems to have been a friend of his (Nikos is the male figure in the very famous Kitaj painting ‘Smyrna Greek’) and to have been glad to provide work for this book. The result, with 43 deftly reproduced images, is rather lovely. The poetry, completely new to me, is quiet, meditative - written without pretension.

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The discovery in the Norwich branch of Borders of copies of the most famous poetry magazine in the world is convincing evidence that the movement, with considerable support from Arts Council East, to transform the city into a centre for literature, must be working. The Chicago based Poetry, founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, has reached Volume 191, number 5. Something to aim at then. Lovely design, an epitome of elegant restraint. Central to this issue are six poems by George Szirtes from a sequences called ‘In The Face of History’: the poems are printed with the photographs from the exhibition of that title at the Barbican which inspired them. Nice work too from Louise Glück and Jorie Graham.

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Issue 61 of Acumen focuses on translation, with two essays on the topic plus a number of translated poems. There’s also a moving memoir, by Andrew C Symons, of a visit to Jack Clemo, and, among other reviews (which really do justify the magazines subtitle A Literary Journal) there’s one of Annemarie Austin’s recent collection Very: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 2008, ISBN 1852247959). Annemarie’s work is consistently strong and often doesn’t get the notice it deserves: good to see Acumen recognising her. Their address is 6, The Mount, Higher Furzeham, Brixham, TQ5 8QY. This is also the address for the Torquay Poetry Festival which runs this year from October 20 - 27. I’m always struck, reading their promotional literature, by the emphasis on sociability that this festival promotes - there seems to be plenty of food and wine on offer. The opportunity to meet other readers and writers is an important part of festivals and it sounds as though the Torbay folk recognise this. We await an invitation, if not for us then for some of The Rialto’s growing band of poets.

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Modern Poetry in Translation (Third Series - Number Nine) is subtitled Palestine: it is, as they say, ‘essential reading’. Central to the issue are two long poems by Mahmoud Darwish. Reconciliation is surely the only hope for the terrible pain of that divided land. Something worth praying for.

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Among other magazines Envoi has a splendid 150th Gala issue and Poetry Wales has changed editors - Robert Minhinnick, after ten years in charge, has handed over to Zoe Skoulding. Poetry London has, like The Rialto, become perfect bound and, like us, looks all the better for it. The new issue features poems by Pauline Stainer and its great to know that Pauline will be appearing at this autumn’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, the twentieth, 7 - 9 November ‘it’s always the ultimate poetry weekend’ (details at www.thepoetrytrust.org or from The Poetry Trust at The Cut, 9 New Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk IP19 8BY). Before that, and overlapping with the Torquay Festival, there’s the Ted Hughes Festival, 22- 28 October at Mytholmroyd - all kinds of events, an evening with Andrew Motion, readings from Anne Stevenson, Anthony Thwaite and many others. Something called ‘Poetry Train’ catches the eye - Leeds to Mytholmroyd, 50 minutes, being read to by Amanda Dalton and John Siddique (£4 cheap day return). John’s first collection, The Prize, will shortly be back in print from The Rialto.

Sorrowful news from the Cley Little Festival of Poetry: because of funding cuts there’s to be only one event this year, with Peter and Ann Sansom on October 11th., - details from Helen Birtwell 01263 821012 or [email protected]. Finally two more competitions to enter: the Kent and Sussex, judge Penelope Shuttle, closing date 31 January 2009, details from 26 Courtlands, Teston, Maidstone, Kent ME18 5AS or www.kentandsussexpoetrysociety.org and the McLellan Poetry Award, for poems in Scots or English, closing date 30 September, judge W.N. Herbert, details at www.mclellandsawards.co.uk or from Corriegills Farm, Corriegills, Isle of Arran KA27 8BL, Scotland. If you win you will be invited to go and collect your prize on 22 November in Corrie Hall on the Isle of Arran, a reward in a class of its own.