Magma Poetry

What an evening it was. A cold night, a packed house, and the utterly complementary talents of Pascale Petit and Selima Hill as our guest readers.

We were also fortunate to host a large number of contributors, many of whom had travelled some distance – from Sweden, Switzerland, Brussels and even California.

The uniqueness of the Magma launches is that everyone whose work is in the issue is invited to read, and one of the joys of being a Magma editor is that you have the opportunity to meet many of the contributors and hear them read their work, poems you have sifted and re-sifted out of many thousands: poems you love and have read deeply. It’s also a gratifying sight to watch an audience riffling through their copies of the magazine to find the page and read along.

During her reading, Selima Hill spoke of her pleasure at being ‘among poets’ and said something to the effect that rather than feeling separated from her audience at the reading, which is so often the case, she felt as if we were all in it together. Which seems a good place to end this little blog – thanks to everyone – contributors, subscribers, and audience for being ‘in it’ with us.

Pascale Petit

Alison Brackenbury

Alan Buckley

Mark Leech

Magma 51 is now available to buy from the Magma website and in bookshops. The issue is edited by Jacqueline Saphra with Ian McEwen with the theme ‘Profane and Sacred’.

Don’t miss the Magma 51 launch reading on Monday 14th November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

Magma’s launch readings have been hosted by Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour for many years.

Knowing many Magma readers are also Coffee-House regulars, we would like to bring to your attention the Fifth Annual Troubadour International Poetry Prize.

It’s been a busy summer for Magma Poetry; we’ve taken part in three fantastic festivals all in the space of a month.

Clare Pollard and I took the train up to Bridlington in June, and spent a couple of days at the fabulously located Bridlington Festival, in the setting of the gorgeous Sewerby Hall. The hall itself is grand enough, but the grounds are even grander and overlook the sea. Clare took an editing workshop which sounded brilliant. I say sounded brilliant, because as I went up there to see how things were going, I could hear the laughter coming all the way down the stairs. But of course serious things were said and done, and it was clear from the faces of the participants that they were enthused about poetry and the editing process. Later, I took part in a panel discussion with Peter Sansom, longtime editor of The North, and Clare did a wonderful reading from her new book, Changeling.

Magma celebrated its 50th issue on Monday 27 June with a full-house Troubadour. A huge and yummy cake was brought in, and everyone collected their Magma 50 souvenir badges. This issue is edited by Clare Pollard, with the newly redesigned Magma magazine featuring  fabulous hand-drawn illustrations by poet-and-designer Henry Simmonds.

Magma 50 is now available to buy from the Magma website and in bookshops. The issue edited by Clare Pollard with the theme ‘Journeys’.

Don’t miss the Magma 50 launch reading on Monday 27 June at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

Magma Poetry is going to be hosting its first Online Meet-the-Editors Q&A session via Twitter on Friday 3 June at 1.00 p.m. British Summer Time (12 noon GMT) for about an hour. And we welcome questions and queries – on Twitter please! – from now until Friday.

Julia Bird, editor of the current issue, Magma 49, will answer your questions and queries about editing the magazine. You will need a Twitter account to ask a question, but you can read the dialogue even if you don’t. So if you’ve ever wondered whether poems have to be on theme, how the rotating editorship affects decisions, whether you can submit a poem if you’ve never been published before, or how long a poem should be, or any other query related to publishing poems in Magma, on Friday 3 June, Julia will have the answers.

If you weren’t able to attend the launch of Magma 49, you can still listen to poems read on the night by some of the contributors to Magma 49.

These recordings are introduced by Julia Bird, the Magma 49 editor. (If you’re reading this via email you may need to click through to the main site to listen to the recordings.)

Magma 49 is now available to buy from the Magma website and in bookshops. The issue is edited by Julia Bird with the theme ‘Build It Up and Knock It Down’.

Don’t miss the Magma 49 launch reading on Monday 14 March at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

Magma 48 is now available to buy from the Magma website and in bookshops. The issue is edited by Laurie Smith, assisted by Rob MacKenzie, with the theme ‘It was beautiful’.

Don’t miss the Magma 48 launch reading on Monday 15 November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.