Magma Poetry

I followed a Facebook discussion last week on whether poets are best to work as full-time writers, or work in a completely different field. Those advocating the former were (unsurprisingly) full-time writers and supporters of the latter had other forms of income.

The argument was that, if you have a full-time job, it’s bound to sap your creative energy – in addition to sapping 40 hours a week of time you could have spent writing. A full-time poet is bound to become a better writer than he/she would become if burdened with a job. The counter-argument was that working offers experience that informs poems, and that many famous poets (Wallace Stevens, WC Williams, TS Eliot, Philip Larkin etc) held down demanding jobs and still managed to write plenty of good poems. As someone who holds down a demanding job, I sided with the counter-argument.

However, I’ve been thinking more about it since. It is indeed true that I often have to break off writing a poem and do a whole load of other things. It’s also true that I get tired and sometimes have little energy for writing poems; even if the will is there, the flesh is weak. There is definitely a downside to combining poetry with a busy job. On the other hand, most ‘full-time’ poets make a living through doing tutorials and workshops, giving readings, writing articles/novels, teaching creative writing, and a host of other work activities that don’t consist of actually writing poems. The few who only write poetry must have a working spouse or other generous relative/benefactor, in addition to Arts Council grants. Almost no one can live off writing poetry alone. It’s easy to romanticise poverty (only a –v away from poetry) but, if you can’t pay the bills, your mind may not be fully on the blank sheet of paper in front of you.

What do you think? Is having a full-time job helpful or destructive for a poet?

We at Magma were thrilled last week when the Forward Poetry Prize shortlists were announced. One of the poems shortlisted for the Best Single Poem prize, is Julia Copus’ ‘An easy passage’ – first published in Magma 45. The fact that the prize is, for the first time, in memory of Michael Donaghy, a poet known and loved by many of us on the Magma team, makes it particularly special.

Having chosen to give Magma 45 the theme of ‘Telling Tales’, I knew Julia’s poem was remarkable as soon as I read it – a master-class in narrative poetry, it seems to compress an entire coming-of-age novel into a few dazzling lines. As a teenage girl in her bikini tries to break into her family house through a window, we pan out to see the whole world around her: her friend, her mother, suburban frustration, empty lives, ‘the long, grey eye of the street’, the bravery and resourcefulness needed to survive small-town adolescence. The poem’s devastating question is: ‘What can she know / of the way the world admits us less and less/ the more we grow?’

Underground Poetry is a new movement in which poems by current writers are photocopied and handed out to people travelling by Tube. Lizzy Dening speaks to the movement’s founder, Nina Ellis, about how poetry can fit into the nine to five.

“Our techniques became fairly guerrilla,” grins Nina Ellis, tucking her hair behind her ears, “It turned out that you’re not really supposed to hand out leaflets of any kind inside Tube stations, so we sped from one station to the next with calls of “Free poem?” before the Tube staff noticed us. We got some fairly inane responses too, like ‘Do I have to pay?’ and ‘Wow, a free phone?’”

I’m pleased to be editing Magma 49 and invite you to submit poems on the theme ‘Build It Up and Knock It Down’ as well as poems on other subjects.

I want to read poems about construction and / or destruction, noisy with the cement mixer and the wrecking ball or quiet as the clicking of knitting needles. Send me your poems about bringing something new into the world – or taking it out again. Actual or metaphorical – show me what you make or what you destroy, and how and why.

The Magma Sales Table, being looked after by Jacqueline Saphra

Magma Poetry sponsored the reading by Philip Gross and Gillian Clarke that took place during the Ledbury Poetry Festival during the first half of July. Jacqueline Saphra and I, on behalf of Magma Poetry, went to Ledbury for the weekend to support the event and sell copies of the magazine there, and also to meet up with poets and poetry readers from across the country.