Magma Poetry

Clare Pollard, Alan Buckley and myself journeyed up to Manchester one cold clear Wednesday morning in October to do a reading and a Q&A about Magma. The train journey passed in the wink of an eye, involving among other things a long and fevered debate about Don Paterson’s interpretation of the sonnets, whether there’s anything you can’t write about in poetry and our relative capacities for caffeine.

At The Cornerhouse, Manchester’s warm and welcoming international arts centre, we met up with Sarah Jackson who had come from Nottingham to read for us. The event took place in a beautiful room with exposed beams in the roof and light flooding in from both sides. The acoustics were great too, so no need for a sound system. Our calm and thoroughly well-organised hosts at the Festival had sold out the event, and the three of us: Alan, Sarah and myself very much enjoyed reading for the attentive and enthusiastic audience. It was interesting to hear three poets all published in Magma reading one after the other – we’re all very different and that difference reflected the ‘Magma-ness’ of the event. Rotating editorship of the magazine for each issue means that we publish a wide range of poems.

Fellow Magma editor Clare Pollard who MC’d the event led the Q&A along with me. It’s always a worry that nobody will have anything to ask in these sessions, but our audience were full of interesting questions, ranging from ‘My poems all rhyme and it’s hard to get them published; why do you think that is?’ to ‘What is a poem?’ to ‘It’s so great to hear the poets reading their own work: why don’t you podcast your readings?’ This last question was a good one, as plans are afoot to record and podcast the launch of Magma 48 on the 15th November at The Troubadour.

It was, as always, a real pleasure to meet some existing readers and find some new ones: the sales table was very busy after the event. Big thanks are due to the terrific organisers of the Manchester Literature Festival and also to our lovely audience, who made us feel so welcome.

EDIT: There’s a very nice review of the Magma Roadshow over at the Manchester Literature Festival blog.

Jacqueline Saphra

Alan Buckley

Sarah Jackson

Clare Pollard and Jacqueline Saphra

Clare Pollard

Photos copyright Manchester Literature Festival, reproduced by kind permission.

In the past couple of years the Magma Roadshow has journeyed up and down and cross country to Aldeburgh, Ledbury, StAnza and Cheltenham. This Autumn we’re excited to be going to the Manchester Literature Festival to run a one-off free lunchtime event at The Cornerhouse.

Clare Pollard, celebrated poet and a member of the Magma team will be MCing the event. Jacqueline Saphra, (also from the Magma team) will be reading, and so will Magma contributors Alan Buckley and Sarah Jackson.

Magma launches each new issue at the Troubadour Café, in association with Coffee-House Poetry, and has hosted many memorable readings over the years. Because of this close association with Coffee-House Poetry and its organiser, Anne-Marie Fyfe, editor of Magma issue 36, we thought you would like to know about this competition. By entering, you help to support its work with live literature, and there’s always the chance of winning one of the prizes!

Judged by Gwyneth Lewis and Maurice Riordan, with both judges reading all poems.

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.

cracking poems – cracking performances – cracking night [/caption]

Carole BromleyTim Wells [/caption]

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.