Magma Poetry

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.

Come and join us for the launch reading of the new issue of Magma on Monday 25th February at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London, as part of the Coffee House Series.

The event will be full of contributors who’ll be coming to read, and we’re also thrilled to have as our guest readers Penelope Shuttle and Clare Pollard who have both contributed poems to this issue.

Come and join us for the launch reading of the new issue of Magma on Monday 19th November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London, as part of the Coffee House Series.

The event will be full of contributors who’ll be coming to read, and we’re also thrilled to have as our guest readers Sean Borodale and Maurice Riordan who have both contributed poems to this issue.

In the introduction to her anthology of clothes poems Out of Fashion (Faber, 2004), Carol Ann Duffy wrote ’[these poems] examine, in their different ways, how we dress or undress, how we cover up or reveal, and how clothes, fashion and jewellery are both a necessary and luxurious, a practical and sensual, a liberating and repressing part of our lives. I hope that the anthology forms an entertaining dialogue between the two arts of poetry and fashion’.This push and pull between cover up and revelation, necessity and luxury is what we’d like to see in your clothes poems for Magma 56, whether you’re writing about dress uniforms or haute couture, morning suits or suits of armour. Tell us about your little black dresses and your lucky pants, your wedding dresses and your weeding gloves and we’ll send the best of your poems down the catwalk of Magma 56.

Give us a twirl. Non-clothes poems also welcome.

The shortlist for this year’s TS Eliot Award has recently been announced. All of us at Magma are delighted to see that our Magma Competition judge, Gillian Clarke, has been shortlisted for her collection, Ice (Carcenet). “In Ice Gillian Clarke turns to the real winters of 2009 and 2010. In their extremity they redefined all the seasons for her. Nature asserted itself and renewed the environment for the imagination… She lives with the planet, its seasons and creatures, in a joyful, anxious communion.” We’d like to congratulate Gillian and to extend our best wishes to all the shortlisted authors.

The four Poetry Book Society Choices, along with six other collections selected by judges Carol Ann Duffy, Michael Longley and David Morley, make up the complete shortlist, which is as follows:

I’d like to say a few words about a subject I don’t often see explored in writing on contemporary poetry, in the hope that perhaps some of the sentiments expressed will chime with others. This year I was lucky enough to win a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award. I was drinking with the other winners in a pub after a reading at the Ledbury Poetry Festival, and the topic of the selection process came up. There was an almost unanimous agreement that each owed their success to the anonymous judging process. Although I didn’t instigate it (if anything, I was playing devil’s advocate), I find myself in line with the general sentiment. I might occasionally entertain the idea that now, after scoring a PBS recommendation and appearing in several anthologies, there’s a chance my name could somehow worm its way quietly into the hindbrain of a key decision maker or two, but the fact is that apart from the Gregory, the only other major prizes in which I’ve placed have been the two National Poetry Competitions – also judged anonymously.

It’s not that there’s flagrant nepotism in poetry (although some may disagree with that). It’s that our sense of poetic taste – just like our literal sense of taste – is informed by a variety of factors and contexts. You’ve heard the expression ‘my ears pricked up’. In the case of poetry, this seems particularly apposite – the idea that on noticing a particular name, one that carries connotations of prestige or prodigiousness, the ear – that organ especially employed in the judgement of a piece – becomes suddenly extra-sensitive. The anticipation of excellence then plays a part in the fulfilment of the promise.

We would be delighted if you would join us for this event at Waterloo East Theatre, Brad Street, London SE1 8TN (5 minutes walk from Waterloo Station)

Doors (and bar) open 6.30.

“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” – Walter Pater

“If a composer could say what he had to say in words, he would not bother trying to say it in music.” – Gustav Mahler

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.

The Poetry Turntable was in action at the Market Theatre during Ledbury poetry festival.  The turntable featured as part of Poetry in Motion, the joint initiative by Magma and Ledbury poetry festival to bring poems and poetry-related content to people out and about in Ledbury.  For further details, see the Poetry in Motion page.

Note to those trying to follow the instructions to connect to the turntable via their mobile phones: this facility was for those standing around the turntable itself, to request the turntable to play their choice of content.