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

With this Issue, Brando's Hat completes its first year of publication. To celebrate, we bring you a collection of poems which is exciting, disturbing and varied. Opening with Mark McLaughlin's wacky world where 'island-based factories keep churning out sexy killer androids with poisonous lipstick.' Joanna Ashwell is haunted by past lives 'Dropping scraps of information they guide us where they will'. C J Allen takes stock: 'A table; a chair; a rug with a stain... some bright ideas'. Cathy Bolton Dances with Dad until they somehow fall out of step; turns to other heroes, 'Swap Silk for navy Cut, even try to roll my own'. Matthew Caley described elsewhere as 'a brilliant mix of eloquence and insolence', is here brilliantly under the influence, '...the drink I'm drinking, by miraculous osmosis is igniting the top of that lime tree...' Joanna Watson's disturbing Invading the Silence will not 'offer blanket amnesty to hangmen'. Extracts from Gordon Wardman's Caedmon sequence introduce us to the first English poet in his search for meaning and words. Kevin Crossley-Holland is Unseeing, but sees Giant Jellyfish very clearly, 'They are mainly throats contracting and dilating...' Echoing Joanna Watson, Christine McNeill's rape victim makes herself strong, 'I survived. Walked out on my husband...' Cultures and generations clash in Khan Singh Kumar's Funny, 'Don't worry pot - you will too lose your colour'. Barbara Bentley's reconstructed nursery rhymes know that darkness lurks behind those childhood rhymes, returning us in Bo Peep to a theme that, in different forms, has recurred in this volume; 'Her child is running past fields where policemen in waxed coats are raking the undergrowth...'

As a special celebratory item, we include on the back cover, a poem by Hazel Skeeter, winner of the 1998 Manchester Poets' Young Person's Poetry Competition, Under 14 Section.

Our grateful thanks to our contributors, subscribers and all who have made this Birthday possible.