Magma Poetry

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.

We left for Ledbury at 9.30 on the Friday morning so we would arrive in good time to see some events before the Magma sponsored reading the next day. We had with us snacks, a SatNav plus a Roadmap (no substitute for an actual book) and the boot was full of Magma paraphernalia for a Roadshow event – copies of the current issue, back issues, leaflets, and an as yet not-fully-functioning banner. We talked poetry and plays and the quality of coffee on the M40, and by the time we arrived at our guest house just outside Ledbury some four hours later, we had barely started our discussion about how long it takes to finish a poem.

We stayed at a rural, newly ‘done up’ guest house just outside town and, our self-imposed rule, as the driver, Jacqui had best room. They were both lovely. But mine had no door. Really – I’m over it now.

On the Friday we had tickets for “Penelope Shuttle and Poets from Cornwall ” in the afternoon, and an Elizabeth Cook / Jenny Joseph double-bill in the evening – both at the Burgage Hall. A wonderfully eclectic mix of female voices ranging from Arcadian bliss to the deeply disturbing. Between we had a chance to catch up with poetry colleagues normally only seen on-line, and to say hello to Chloe Garner, the Festival Director who allowed us to be part of the wonderful activities. Then the group of six of us who went to dinner grew until we didn’t really all fit round the table, and the waitress in the restaurant had slightly lost the plot. Who can blame her? We kept playing musical chairs and I think my neighbour ate the tuna ordered by Alice from Cornwall.

The next morning Jacqui and I set to fixing the banner. The hook had vanished meaning it would not stay open and pinged back with alarming force and noise. We made a new hook using a wire coat-hanger, pliers, a glue-gun and it was attached by the long arms of the guest-house owner’s son. Watching Blue Peter is clearly never a wasted pastime and the banner stayed up. In the middle of all this we were introduced to 2-day-old chicks bred by the aforementioned long-armed lad. And here is the photo to prove it.

We were honoured to sponsor the reading by T S Eliot Award winner Philip Gross, and National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke. It was a truly packed house with the front-of-house team bringing in extra chairs at the back, and a few unfortunates having to suffer the heat of sitting in the mezzanine. But we hope they agree it was worth it. Philip Gross’s reading style allows every poem to breathe. It was like being in a contemporary art exhibition where each work was perfectly framed to allow the piece to take centre stage. And Gillian’s extraordinary lyrical work and Welsh lilt brought a lump to the throat. Jacqui has given me the OK to share that she had trouble not blubbing.

After the reading, as Philip Gross and Gillian Clarke signed copies of their collections, we sold copies of the magazine and chatted to poets and poetry lovers at our sales table.

A quick bite to eat, and a glass of red wine was followed by Martin Figura’s intimate narrative performance poem Whistle and then an early night.

We left Ledbury the next morning as the town was preparing for all-day street festivities. It was a party Ledbury. Thank you for having us.

cracking poems – cracking performances – cracking night [/caption] Carole BromleyTim Wells [/caption] Maureen DuffyMichael Foley [/caption] Matthew SweeneyDorothea Smartt [/caption] Roisin TierneyDenrele Ogunwa [/caption] Jo ShapcottBarbara Marsh

Photographs by Rebecca Root.

For a devilishly exciting way to spend midsummer eve, we would love for you to join us for the launch reading of Magma 47. The reading takes place on Monday 21 June in the Coffee-House Poetry series at the Troubadour Coffee House, 265 Old Brompton Road, London SW5 . It’s a prompt start at 8 p.m., and you’ll need to come early to bag a seat near the front. Or come even earlier and mingle with poets and the Magma team beforehand over a mushroom omelette and chips in the restaurant upstairs.

Annie Freud will be introducing the evening and co-hosting. A goodly number of poets have each agreed to read a poem, and we are delighted that the Magma showcase poet Dorothea Smartt will be sharing some of her work, plus we are thrilled to confirm that the guest readers are Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney.

Musing on the process of editorship this morning after the the launch of our spring issue, I was amused to discover that the production time of an issue of Magma from conception to delivery is not much short of nine months: Magma 46 began its journey in mid July 2009 and the launch was on March 8th 2010.

And what a ride it’s been. From the painful sieving and re-sieving of the poems, the to and fro between myself and my trusty and inspired assistant Norbert Hirschhorn, through to the ideas and commissioning of the prose and the reviews, to finally getting down to the cover copy and editorial, it’s been a mind-bending task.

Magma 45 is now available. The issue is edited by Clare Pollard, with the theme ‘Telling Stories’. You can read a selection from the issue online and buy the magazine via our website.

Don’t miss the launch reading on Monday 16 November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

This year Magma Poetry was lucky enough to be running a workshop at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. This was appropriately titled ‘Writing Poetry’ and we shared it with Don Paterson, who has just won this year’s Forward Prize for his collection, ‘Rain’.

Don spent two fascinating hours at the workshop taking questions and talking about the English language lyric poem, and covered large areas of poetic ground, offering us his take on prosody, metre, phonetics and even managing to squeeze in a brief sentence or two on the subject of metaphor.

We at Magma Poetry are delighted to be working with the celebrated poet, Don Paterson, to bring you a seminar-style workshop for participants with all levels of experience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Jacqueline Saphra, editor of Magma 46, will be joining Don to give you insights, ideas and probably anecdotes about poetry and publishing. Expect helpful advice as well as the kind of inspiration and surprising technical tips for which Don is justly famed. Hear from Jacqueline what it’s really, truly like to edit an issue of Magma Poetry and how she has been going about choosing around sixty poems from the thousands that find their way to Magma’s inbox for each issue.

Magma Poetry is on the road again, this time taking a trip to the lovely Ledbury Poetry Festival.

We’re proud to be sponsoring a reading by Ros Barber and Glyn Maxwell. Glyn recently featured in Magma in our ‘Presiding Spirits’ feature and was interviewed about the beautiful  and resonant poem we commissioned from him – a homage to one of his poetry heroes, Thomas Hardy.

What a varied and exciting evening as we launched Magma 44 into the summer with a splash. On what felt like the hottest night of the year, the cellar of The Troubadour was packed with poetry lovers.

The contributors who read (including our two distinguished guests, Imtiaz Dharker and Lawrence Sail) were fabulous and many had travelled a long way to be with us. It’s always so good to hear the poems when you’ve only seen them on the page, and put faces to names and voices to their words. It’s also a revelation to hear the poems read more or less in the order in which they appear in the magazine, to experience the connections and juxtapositions. The ‘Vertical Dimension’ theme brought us a broad range of work, full of surprises.

Don’t miss the launch reading for Magma 44, edited by Tim Kindberg and Rosie Shepperd, on Monday 22 June at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

We are delighted to have two leading poets as guest readers: Imtiaz Dharker, poet, artist and documentary film-maker, whose next collection Leaving Fingerprints is due out from Bloodaxe later this year, and whose four poetry collections Purdah and other poems, Postcards from god, I speak for the devil and The terrorist at my table all include her own drawings; and Lawrence Sail, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and former chairman of the Arvon Foundation and director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, who has nine collections of poems, most recently Eye-Baby, and two books due in Autumn 2010: Waking Dreams: New & Selected Poems and Songs of the Darkness.