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

AMBIT No. 50. 25p., ed. Martin Bax, 17 Priory Gardens. London N6. Still one of the more cliquish of the larger magazines. Ambit remains slick and affected. “Night Round” by Bax is probably the best-written prose in this issue; it still fails to go anywhere. Most of the other contributors suffer from an excessive absorption with their own style and cleverness. Ballard, once a very competent science-fiction writer who has since turned respectable, contributes a sterile little prose poem; Paolozzi uses the lazy writer’s technique of a mock film script.

THE BRIDGE Nos. 28-30, ed. Slavko Mihalic, Trg Republike 7, Zagreb, SFR Yugoslavia. This entire issue is devoted to contemporary Croatian prose, with 20 short stories of many different types by as many writers, stretching over 285 pages (Part One was Issue Nos. 23-24). Some very good, some not so good, none of them wholly bad. Well worth reading if you’re interested in knowing what one small area of Yugoslavia can produce.

CANADIAN FICTION MAGAZINE No. 5. $1.50, ed. R. W. Stedingh, 4248 Weisbrod Street, Prince George, B.C.. Canada. All four of the stories in this magazine read like products of a creative writing course. Don Bailey’s is probably the best of a mediocre lot.

CHAPMAN Vol.2. No. 1, 35p., ad. Walter Perrie, 118 Brankholm Brae, Hamilton, Lanarkshire. Twenty-eight pages of verse and comment, Scottish Arts Council supported. Mostly badly written academic stuff, some in what I take to be Scots dialect. Giles Gordon’s simpler piece stands out.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION No. 12. $1.75, eds. Andreas Schroeder and Michael Yates, 954 West 7th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Less interesting than usual, this issue is devoted exclusively to French-Canadian poets writers who, to judge by this selection, seem unduly wordy. I liked Michel Garneau; on the other hand Gatien Lapointe’s interminable poem “Face to Face” grinds on sophomorically (“What use then is life?/-- My life/And who will love me then?”) for seventeen merciless pages. I don’t think the translator can be blamed for this one.

CRAB GRASS No. 5, 15p., eds. John Gilbert and Marcus Patton. 7 Rugby Road, Belfast 7, Northern Ireland. Sub-titled “Poetical Sonatas”, thirty pages of short poems, illustrations and montages. Some of it very good, most of it amusing and all of it refreshingly free of pomposity or affectation. A highly recommended 15-pence worth.

GARGANTUA No. 2, 10p., ed. Robert Ensor, 134 Hollybank Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham. Forty-eight pages, duplicated, mostly poetry; little of it much good. Opal Nations contributes another indigestible chunk of the Stanley Cantos. Printing bad poetry for the first time may be excusable (it shouldn’t be), but why on earth has Peter Cash’s excruciating “Infanticide” been ressurected from the Dec. ‘71 issue of “Gong”? By the way, three lines of verse do not a haiku make.

HEADLAND No. 10, 25p., ed. William Oxley, 27 Brook Road, Epping, Essex. Poetry and reviews, generally competent and often interesting if not always exciting. Recommended. Kirkup / Light / Curtis / Holland / Gurney / Finch.

JOE DIMAGGIO No. 1, 20p., ed. John Robinson, 6 Knowle Avenue, Bexlyheath, Kent. A large chunk of duplicated coloured pages, poetry and prose, ranging from the terrible to the turgid, shoved in with no cohesion, no sign of an editor’s presence, and with no sign of justification for its presence here. OK, little mags don’t necessarily have to prove anything or even aim at a basic level of competence, but there has to be some shred of critical intellect behind them. This selection isn’t really all that appalling, but it is a crushingly pointless batch of near-rejects. Why bother?

KARAKI No. 2, ed. Ken Fernstorm, C/o Dept. of English. University of Victoria, Victoria. B.C., Canada. Local poetry and prose; the verse of Rob Leaf and Alan Jones is probably the most interesting. Once again, too insular.

LITTACK No. 1, 40p., The Ember Press, 128 Ember Lane, Esher, Surrey. An odd beast this, almost a one-man ego trip. The editorial, which goes in for shouting from the rooftops and statements in caps, tells us that “this magazine commits itself to THE DEFENCE OF THE CRITICAL INTELLIGENCE IN WESTERN CIVILISATION”; of the rest, sixty-two pages are taken up by various products of a Mr. Jason Hardy’s pen, five by Brian Oxley poems, and two by a Jonathan Swift excerpt. The Swift is first rate and worth looking up in your local library. The editor remains, with good reason, anonymous.

LINES No. 11, 10p., ed. Geoff Holland, 9 Park Crescent East, North Shields, Northumberland NE30 2HQ. Poetry and reviews; still rather untidy in appearance but good value. The overall quality of the poems has improved since the last issue. Calder / Patten / Edridge / Simpson / Light / Robinson / Ritchie Smith.

LUDD’S MILL No. 5, 10p., ed. Steve Sneyd, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield HD5 8PB. Huddersfield’s own marches on, a Spike Milligan collage of poems, prose, cartoons, Arts Council letters and whatever else the editor could lay his hands on at short notice. Amusing, and some of the poetry is decidedly worth tracking down through the jungle.

MODERN POETRY IN TRANSLATION No. 12, 50p., ed. Daniel Weissbort. 10 Compayne Gardens, London NW6 3HD. Remains the best magazine in the translation field; its generally high standards are of course a reflection of the fact that when one has the entire world to pick from, one can be considerably more eclectic (other reviews take note), and picking good translators helps too . . . . . The poems of Sergei Esenin (USSR), Attila Jozsef (Hungary) and Hakagi Kyozo (Japan) make this a very good issue, slightly marred for me by the overlong and imitative Amalrik play (what’s it doing here anyway?)

OMENS No. 2, 10p., ad. G. Fraser, 10 Toller Road, Leicester. Poetry, inoffensive and uninspired for the most part.

THE PARIS REVIEW 53, 40p.. ad. George A. Plimpton, 17 Rue de Tournon, Paris 6, France. Very much the mixture as before: the poems get odder and odder. Harry Mathews’ continuation of ‘The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium’ is very good, so is the interview with John Berryman.

PINK PEACE No. 3. 20p., ad. John Rice, Bag End, 1 Darby Road, Folkestone, Kent. Poetry, graphics, reviews. In part locally orientated and uneven in content, but attractive in an odd sort of way . . . . .

POETRY Vol. 120. No. 2, $1.25, ad. Daryl Hine, 1228 N.Dearborn Parkway, Chicago, Illinois. The oldest and best established poetry magazine in the english-speaking world, owing most of its (compared to us peasants) vast circulation to library subscriptions, this beautifully printed, traditionalist monthly remains for the most part infuriatingly dull . . . . . Good review section.

PRISM INTERNATIONAL Vol. 12, No. 1,5 1.75, ad. Jacob Zilber, Dept. of Creative Writing. University of British Colombia, Vancouver 8. B.C., Canada. It seems as though nine tenths of the contributors in this issue are connected with the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing Course, which is a little high for a magazine with “international” in its name. Most of the team’s work is pretty rough, too. However, the poems of Parm Mayer and Par Lagerkvist (translated by Auden and Sjoberg) are highly recommended, as is Ken Mitchell’s fine short story “Truckin’”. The short novel by James Wyatt is good but drags on. If Prism lost its insularity and amateurism it could become very interesting.

TRANSGRAVITY ADVERTISER Nos. 3/4. ed. Paul Brown, 176 Peckham Rye, London SE22 9QA. Advertising on one side. ‘work’ on the other — in this case, a collage by Hans Clavin and what I take to be a poem by Alison Dunhill. Another issue (unnumbered) features a poem by Djamila Boupacha plus photo.

SECOND AEON 15, ad. Peter Finch, 3 Maplewood Court, Maplewood Avenue, Llandaff North, Cardiff CF4 2N8, Wales. As usual, this magazine has the lot: big names, small names, avant-garde and traditional material, concrete, graphics, 2 short stories, articles on concrete poetry and the new theatre, letters, and the most complete magazine and book round-up ever, all beautifully printed — what more can one want for the price?

SMALL PRESS REVIEW Nos, 10, 11, 12. ad. Len Fulton, 5218 Scottwood Road, Paradise California 95969, $1.00. The small press scene in America: profiles, news, notes, reviews in depth, book fairs, exhibitions, comments. Fascinating for those who have become obsessional about the little mag world. No. 12 is particularly good — working at the “archetype of collection” — the proliferation of small press organizations over the last 10 years. It contains reports from all, or most, of these organizations.

STAND Vol. 13, No. 3, 30p., ad. Jon Silkin, 58 Queens Road, Newcastle upon Tyne. Uneven issue, including some uninspiring MacBeth, a piece of Strindberg prose which I suspect is badly translated, good poetry by Mirko Lauer and Igor Webb, and various other pieces which left no particular impression. If this sounds lukewarm, it’s meant to.