Magma Poetry

Magma 51 is now available to buy from the Magma website and in bookshops. The issue is edited by Jacqueline Saphra with Ian McEwen with the theme ‘Profane and Sacred’.

Don’t miss the Magma 51 launch reading on Monday 14th November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

As well as the usual host of contributors who’ll be coming to read, we’re also thrilled to have as our guest readers Pascale Petit and Selima Hill who have both contributed poems to this issue.

The evening will start at 8pm sharp, at The Troubadour Coffee House, 265 Old Brompton Road, London SW5 (near Earl’s Court Tube. Tickets are £7/£6 concessions and you can also pick up a copy of the magazine or take out a subscription.

Hope you can make it. We’d love to see you there.

“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

Magma’s launch readings have been hosted by Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour for many years.

Knowing many Magma readers are also Coffee-House regulars, we would like to bring to your attention the Fifth Annual Troubadour International Poetry Prize.

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.

I’m excited to be Editor of Magma 52 with Helen Nicholson as Assistant Editor, and the theme for the issue is “putting on the mask”.

I chose this theme because all of us from time to time put on a mask of one kind or another, perhaps for reasons of good manners, or self-preservation against hurt or anger or love.

Our exciting new mobile poetry initiative comes to Ledbury Poetry Festival.

In addition to the Magma Roadshow event, Magma and Ledbury Poetry Festival are bringing poems to those out and about at the festival (1-10 July 2011) via their mobile phones, through a project called Poetry in Motion.

Magma 50 is now available to buy from the Magma website and in bookshops. The issue edited by Clare Pollard with the theme ‘Journeys’.

Don’t miss the Magma 50 launch reading on Monday 27 June at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

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.

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.