Magma Poetry

I am surprised by the passion in the poetry community about the word “shards”. Having heard from two reputable poets / teachers of creative writing whose opinions I value that “shards” is a no no, and having read on the website of another poetry magazine that the word “shards” should be avoided, I said on twitter that it was pretty clear the word should not be used.

But opinion is divided. There was support for the view that such, what I shall I call them, old-fashioned or twee words should not be written into poems, with people volunteering other words such as “gossamer” and “flux” that should also not be used. But I was reminded that luminaries such as Heaney with “In ash-pits, oxides, shards and chlorophylls”, Hughes with “Then you smashed it/Into shards, crude stars/And gave them to your mother”, and Khalvati with “our algebra of shards” clearly have no such qualms.

Is it then a matter of taste? Or is it rather than some words should not be misused? If the latter, then what of poetic metaphor?

The jury is out for me. I would not use “gossamer wings” because it is far too familiar. But do I completely dismiss the idea of using gossamer? Probably. Similarly, it is unlikely I would use “flux capacitor” because it does not strike me as an immediately useful metaphor. But might I use ‘flux’? Actually I might if it fitted the poem. I like the sound of it.

Is it a question of taste? Or is it truly valid to say that some words have passed their sell-by date?

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.

I’m pleased to be editing the 50th issue of Magma, with Mary Tymkow as assistant editor. We’re planning some special celebratory features, and thinking about the distance Magma has travelled has inspired our theme.

I invite you to submit poems on the subject of journeys. Every poem should in itself be a journey – as Robert Frost said: ‘A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.’ But the theme also suggests three areas of writing that I’m interested in.

The Forward Prizes were awarded last Wednesday evening. All of us at Magma were delighted that Julia Copus won the £1000 award for Best Poem for An Easy Passage, which was published in Magma 45, edited by Clare Pollard. Laurie Smith, who attended the awards ceremony on Magma’s behalf, reports:

The occasion was packed out with poets and publishers. The chair of the judges, Ruth Padel, spoke warmly about each of the shortlisted poets before announcing the winner (there are no runners-up). Julia went up and read her poem very effectively and the audience clearly found it moving.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have been asked to programme two events at a poetry festival. You have an unlimited budget, but each event must contain only three poets.

For the first event you can invite three living poets from anywhere in the world to read together. Who would they be? And why would you invite them?

Do you get fed up with poets’ efforts at self-promotion? Well, you’d be in good company because many poets find doing it awkward, which perhaps explains why their efforts are often clumsy and sometimes ill-considered.

Poets these days are expected to do more than write poems. As well as doing readings, many poets are on Facebook and Twitter. They write blogs, make videos of their poems on YouTube, and post to online discussion forums. They network, make contact with festivals and reading series, and publicise their books – if they don’t, no one else is going to do it for them (well, publishers do their bit, but what they can do is limited). Stephen King and Jodi Picoult have massive publicity budgets to get their books in the public eye and shift millions of copies. That isn’t true of any poet. In among all this frenetic activity, poets must write poems. If they have a family and paid employment, the time to write poems will be further curtailed.

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?’

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.