Magma Poetry

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?’

The shortlist for the Forward Poetry Prizes is available to download from the Forward website. We will be cheering for Julia on the night!

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.

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.

“As one who once considered himself in the vanguard of writing as writing, it is difficult for me to describe my feelings when confronted by a new generation of writers who are dedicated not to an exploration of any particular literary dimension I can identify beyond a snotty tone of voice. I know this isn’t something I ever had in mind.

Beyond that, there are a number of other identifiable trends, which I would characterize briefly as: 1) Poems that prove how smart I am; 2) Poems that prove what a master of rhetoric I am; 3) Poems that prove I am a dope addict; and 4) Poems that just generally prove how hard I am to understand in any way…”

Adventurous forms of poetry barely made a showing in the contributions submitted for consideration for Magma 47 – by “adventurous forms” I mean unfamiliar forms, whether old or new, including experimental and invented forms. Even scarcer were poems where these unfamiliar forms were relevant to the poem’s content. Adventurous forms of theatre such as immersive or site-specific are trending at the moment, as a complement to traditional or familiar forms, as writers and performers explore meaning to be found in new spaces. In my view, how theatre uses chosen physical space, and how a poet uses the chosen space of form, have common ground. So why are poets reluctant to take up the challenges of exploring how adventurous forms can add meaning to poetic text?

I have been working as Assistant Editor to Guest Editor Annie Freud who painstakingly read every contribution sent, before making her choices. This gave me the chance to read everything sent in, which was a joyous, humbling and – yes at times – slow process. Most poems submitted are in free form and gloriously cover the whole range of subjects and ideas. And a few are in traditional, familiar forms such as the sonnet and villanelle. But I was surprised how little poetry used adventurously unfamiliar or newer forms – such as the pantoum (an old form but seldom used), concrete or found poetry, the specular or sevenling – when such forms are ripe for exploration. Some did and were extraordinary; and a few were brave enough to try different forms but more as an exercise than as a communication tool. Writing any formal poetry can be challenging, and I know how very hard it is to create a strong poem when experimenting with unknown forms. But is “it’s difficult to do” an excuse for poets not to explore the relationship between different forms and content?

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.

In a discussion last year on the Magma blog, Sheenagh Pugh used the phrase, “as if any writer weren’t liable to get better with more experience of both life and handling words.”

Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? And some writers do seem to get better with age. Each collection they produce is better than the one before or, at least, their later work is generally stronger than their early material. Some writers even become embarrassed over their early material. Norman MacCaig disowned his first two collections. I’m told that a contemporary Scottish poet bought all remaining copies of his debut book and pulped them himself.

All of seventeen years chairing the Magma group, eleven years presenting our launches at the Coffee House Poetry sessions at the Troubadour – hard to believe it. And now I bow out, at our AGM at the end of March. A few memories, a few thoughts.

Our first meeting, and taking the lead in setting us up with an Agenda, Minutes, a Chairman, a Treasurer, a Secretary – paraphernalia surprising to some of the others, fellow members of Laurie Smith’s poetry class at the City Lit.  But no point bothering unless we were ambitious, and no chance of realising our ambitions unless we were businesslike. Getting off the ground fine. But then our nadir, two or three years in. Meeting in a dingy dark basement room in the City Lit. Fewer members, some having given up. Sales static. Quality of poems fine, but who cared? Decision – persist.