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

It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was sitting at my desk in the cold dark days of mid-winter, writing a happy New Year to you in the editorial for Issue Eight. Already, though, the year has turned through spring and summer and, as the rain splutters like popcorn beyond the window and the weather slides towards another winter, what could be better than curling up with this latest issue, flame bright outside and in…

   Much has happened in the intervening months. Many envelopes
have landed on the Brittle Star doormat, most of them C5-sized,
stuffed with poems and short stories, but there have been envelopes with cheques in too, for new subscriptions and special stars. Thank you – we’ve been astonished by your generosity and support! Many emails, with interesting attachments, have popped into the Brittle Star inbox. Systems have been sorted; a new website set up: www.brittlestar.org.uk; a fabulous, standing-room-only launch at
Borders Bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road organised. New editors are beginning to feel like older editors, discussing marketing strategies, line endings, font sizes with equal passion and vigour.

   We very much hope you enjoy the fruits of this experience – and of your creative skills. There is so much here to savour: new poems from new writers for Brittle Star – and one or two names we’ve published before; Jacqueline Gabbitas’ fantastic interview with Jeremy Hooker; an essay on the Writewords website which I guarantee will have you connecting to the e-waves as fast as
you can say www. And we are particularly pleased and excited to be introducing Julia Lewis in the first of our new series of Rising Stars.
 
   While we’ve been putting together Issue 10, much also has been going on in the wider world, not all of it so happy. When faced with the news of war or terror or, closer to home, sudden, unexpected death, it’s sometimes hard to know the point of little magazines for new writing – or larger magazines! However, like the MacNeice poem ‘Soap Suds’, which will hold, for as long as people can
read English, a time, a place, a perfect little history in the bubble of its verse, the best writing captures and recreates the fleeting moments of experience. A small thing, but it’s a stay against mortality and, oh, so pleasurable at times…