Poetry is a shaping of words and that shape can often be seen on the page. At the most basic level, lines that turn before they reach the margin are an early cue for us to treat text as poem. In Magma 57 we are particularly interested in poems that possess shapeliness; poems that look interesting on the page; poems whose appearance is integrated with their form and content; shape as key to timing, meaning and music.
Seamus Heaney has spoken of the sonnet form as a body, with a waist and a need for the right number of limbs in order to function. That kind of shapeliness is not obvious in the layout of text (although perhaps readers can register a block of fourteen lines as a single gestalt, just as we recognise 
as a face). So we certainly do not insist on unconventional layouts, unconventional layouts, in fact
we do NoT wa
NT the kind of poe try
That s c a t t e r s i t s elf r and om ly
in the vague
hope of adding interest to prose observations. On the other hand unconventional layouts which serve formal and poetic purposes are welcomed. Reflexive poems that muse on their own shape will have to be best-in-class to be admitted!
We hope to see some unashamedly concrete poetry. We hope to see some beautiful formal verse in stanzas of unequal lines – think Donne (‘The Message’ or ‘The Triple Fool’ for example) or George Herbert’s ‘Easter Wings’. We hope to see some dramatic use of the page. We hope to see many things we have never imagined.
As usual we’ll choose many of the poems for the magazine without particular regard to our theme, just because we admire them as poems – although perhaps this theme is hard to escape: even (especially?) prose poetry talks through its distinctive visual form, the body evident on the page.
Kia ora,
When are submissions due?
Thanks,
Nicola (Aotearoa-New Zealand)
This is a great Idea, love it, I love using the Rictameter which has an excellent shape, but this form requires rhyming, does Magma print such forms if rhymed.
Yes Stephen we certainly are happy to print rhymed poems. The reason the count of rhymes in the magazine is modest is that well-constructed rhymed verse is rare in the submissions pile too (if my last turn in the editorial team is anything to go by).
I should like to send you a poem in the shape of a tree, and there is no way this will work in the body of an email. May I please send it as an attachment? I have other shape poems, for which the same thing applies.
I so agree that a poem should look good on the page – how often do we see lines squashed together any old how – which immediately causes me to turn away without reading. I use 1.15 spacing, which puts a little air around the words.
Keats; Wordsworth; Byron; Dylan Thomas will be turning in their graves, concrete poetry has as much feeling as concrete!
Viv – I am resigned to opening a lot of attachments on this issue! I’m also resigned to the fact that treating poems well in the magazine will be space hungry and we’ll probably have room for fewer of them. (and yes I normally overlead all of my poems).
Harry – Thomas certainly had a great visual sense – how beautiful ‘Fern Hill’ is on the page and what about ‘Vision and Prayer’? Keats’ odes and songs have a look that leads you through them. So shapeliness does not equal ‘concrete’ in my mind ….though I obviously have a softer spot for full-on concrete work than you do!
George Herbert’s poem Angel Wings (1633) is beautifully shaped, like wings, and Dylan Thomas’s collection Deaths and Entrances contains many shaped poems. e.g. Poem in October, Love in the Asylum, Vision and Prayer, Holy Spring and, of course, Fern Hill. The monk, Dom Sylvester Houédard produced fascinating concrete poems as did his friend Edwin Morgan
This sounds very exciting. I have recently written a piece which I believe to be concrete poetry for my assignment on an MA in Creative Writing and when writing up the commentary I began to consider exploring it more. I like the way in which space can be used to highlight specific words or lines. There is a Japanese term for this which I will look up but it refers to ‘space on the page’ being as important as words.
A modern example of concrete poetry is ‘Starlings’ by Ann Rouse, take a look.
Raine Geoghegan
How does one submit?
Some of the best concrete poetry is being produced as vispo these days, using desktop publishers and the like. So are you open to jpegs, different fonts, colour? Vispo, concrete minimalism using large size font etc? You’ve opened up a world of wonder!
George – if you click on the navigation in the header where it says ‘contributions’ general instructions are there. So, simply send your submission to contributions@magmapoetry.com – for this issue we accept that there will be a higher than usual count of poems that will have to be viewed as attachments! The contribution window is open from now until 30th June, but we won’t sit on early contributions unless they are under serious consideration for publication.
How about this? Just trying!
LAUGHTER.
The joy and boy of the bouncing
Belly of ballyhoo, bursting of seams
And dreams blown on exploding breath
Into a mixture of rollicking
Rainbows and stars and fairs
Of music, with no cares
And no heads to ache.
O the hearts hallelujahs make
Men free and alive and long after
Chuckle the echoes of their laughter—
Harry Haines.
Ian,
I know he can’t submit it as it’s already published online, but i thought my friend’s poem might take your interest
http://thebothyproject.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/luke-allan.html
K
Ian, surely you must have something to say about my poem ‘Laughter’ or do you think I’m just taking the piss
Hi Harry,
I’m not going to start commenting on poems on this thread or it would never stop. If you want to submit to the magazine the address to use is contributions@magmapoetry.com. But if I was going to comment I’d say it was going great for me until the grammatical inversion of the last line.
And while I’m here:
I’ve just come across a very interesting book which says a lot that I agree with about visual form, Graphic Poetics by Richard Blandford (Bloomsbury 2012).
Well Ian, I’m puzzled why you found the last line of my poem ‘Laughter’ a grammatical inversion. That poem was in my book ‘For you and you’ and praised extensively by Professor Weis at the U.C.L and by Dr John Astill a retired consultant psychiatrist with high literary and grammatical skills. But if that is your take on it, so be it.
Steven Nelson – sorry I missed replying to your questions (for some reason I don’t always see these comments come up in the order in which they are posted). The short answer is please send us anything – it should be up to us to find means of getting good work to an audience. The longer and less philosophical answer is that, of course, some work may not be possible to reproduce in the printed magazine for technical reasons (and we can’t afford colour on the inside pages). However Magma also has a regular poetry Newsletter with over 1000 subscribers and we have tried to provide added value links and downloads through it that complement magazine content. Also remember Magma is now available in a Kindle edition – anything designed with Kindle in mind would be very interesting!
Hi Ian,
I work with handmade paper, letterpress and transfer to make visual poetry pieces, I am interested in concept and process and most of the pieces I make involve text inside and on the back of the paper that cannot be seen, as well as on the surface. I plan to submit some photos that I hope could be considered and would work well enough as images in print. However I also know that you have cover artwork, and wondered if you accept separate submissions (in colour) for that?