Magma Poetry

Magma Poetry is on the road again, this time taking a trip to the lovely Ledbury Poetry Festival.

We’re proud to be sponsoring a reading by Ros Barber and Glyn Maxwell. Glyn recently featured in Magma in our ‘Presiding Spirits’ feature and was interviewed about the beautiful  and resonant poem we commissioned from him – a homage to one of his poetry heroes, Thomas Hardy.

The event is on Friday 10th July at 2.30pm. Roberta James, Laurie Smith and Allison McVety, all members of the Magma team, will be there, so do stop by the sales table and say hello.

In this week’s excellent episode of ‘A Poet’s Guide to Britain’ on the BBC, the poet Clare Pollard is interviewed by Owen Sheers about Sylvia Plath’s landscape poetry. Clare is a member of the Magma team and is currently editing Magma 45, which will be launched in November 2009.

The episode will be available on iPlayer for the next month – watch it online here or you can catch it on on BBC4, Thursday 14th May at 22.00. If you’re in a hurry, you may like to know that Clare first appears 4 minutes into the programme, but it’s well worth taking the time to watch the whole programme.

Warm congratulations from Magma to Carol Ann Duffy on her appointment as the UK’s new Poet Laureate, announced today.

In a refreshing break from tradition, it won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that Duffy is the first female Poet Laureate since the post was first awarded over 300 years ago. On BBC Radio 4 this morning, she cited this as a reason for accepting the office:

This is a brief reminder that the launch reading for Magma 43 is next Monday 2 March at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court.

Our guest readers are Glyn Maxwell, whose poetry collections have attracted awards including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (for The Nerve, 2004) and whose latest collection, Hide Now, was shortlisted for the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize; and John Stammers, whose first collection Panoramic Lounge Bar won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2001), and whose second, Stolen Love Behaviour, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Regular Magma readers will also recall the terrific issue John delivered for us as guest editor of Magma 31.

Here’s a date for your diary — 2 March at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, for the launch reading of Magma 43, edited by David Boll and Andrew Neilson.

We are delighted to welcome two distinguish guest readers: Glyn Maxwell, whose poetry collections have attracted awards including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (for The Nerve, 2004) and whose latest collection, Hide Now, was shortlisted for the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize; and John Stammers, whose first collection Panoramic Lounge Bar won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2001), and whose second, Stolen Love Behaviour, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Regular Magma readers will also recall the terrific issue John delivered for us as guest editor of Magma 31.

Warm congratulations from the Magma team go to Jen Hadfield on winning the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place. As might be expected, given the high regard for this prize, she won it against very tough competition.

I and my Magma colleagues are particularly pleased for her after publishing and writing about her poetry for a long time. In 2003, as editor of Magma 25, I was so taken with the originality of her work and in particular her naturalistic integration of both the human and natural worlds that I included four of her poems, including Southport air show. Then Laurie Smith chose her as the Showcase poet in Magma 28. We reviewed her first collection Almanacs in Magma 32, and Nigh-No-Place in Magma 41.

Launches of Magma Poetry always have the feeling of An Occasion. The launch of Magma 42 perhaps even more than usual; we had planned it as a celebration of the newly refreshed Magma – bigger, better and with an enhanced design.

Many of the poets featured in the issue were there to read their poems, and one of the pleasures of the evening was to hear the poems read in the order in which they appear in the magazine, giving a sense of the connections and juxtapositions. From my point of view, it was fascinating to have sight of some of the poets whose work we chose, to put faces and voices to the words.

Here’s your chance to meet two of Magma’s editors, Laurie Smith and Tim Robertson and hear them in discussion with three poets who have been published in Magma: gifted and gorgeous Clare Pollard, enigmatic and exciting Linda Black, and passionate and perspicacious Alan Buckley, all of whom will also give short readings which will give you some idea of the range and reach of the magazine. There will also be a Q&A.

So everything you’ve always wanted to know about Magma Poetry but been afraid to ask …

We hope to see you at The Troubadour tonight (Mon 17 Nov), for the launch reading for Magma 42 .

Our guest readers are Blake Morrison and Vicki Feaver. As usual many of the contributors to the magazine will also be reading.

Photo by desmoheart78

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