| Presiding Spirits: Adrian Mitchell |
In Presiding Spirits, we commission a new poem that draws on the past, and ask the poet to tell us about the influences on their work. For this issue, Adrian Mitchell has written Sheepishly, which he describes as “a sort of a report from the building site of the New Jerusalem by one of the… |
| Announcing a new movement in British poetry? |
Magma 35 proclaims a literary phenomenon – “The London School”. In an article in the print edition, Laurie Smith surveys poetry about London through the ages, and argues that “a group of younger poets have found ways of making evident the strangeness of living in London right now.” He pinpoints their common traits, compares them… |
| Matthew Caley, Sarah Wardle and Christopher James reviewed |
Matthew Caley’s second collection comes wrapped in a bright yellow cover with electric shock hazard warning signs. It doesn’t disappoint. From the first page to the last, the book crackles with linguistic inventiveness – rhymes, puns, alliteration, assonance, formal games and recherché vocabulary. It is also stuffed like a magpie’s nest with scraps of high… |
| Magma 35 Launch Reading - 3 July |
Wendy Cope read history at Oxford and then worked as a London primary school teacher until the publication of her first book of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Faber) in 1986. She now lives in Winchester. Alicia Stubbersfield teaches English in Cheltenham and creative writing in various places. Her third collection Joking Apart is… |
| Magma at Ledbury Poetry Festival - 2 July |
Sunday 2 July 5.30 pm in The Community Hall, Lawnside Road, Ledbury, Herefordshire. Tickets £8. Box office telephone 0845 458 1743. Full Festival programme at www.poetry-festival.com We will be at the event with a stall where you can meet members of the Magma team, submit poems, buy copies of the magazine, and take out a… |
Supported by Arts Council England