Magma 90, Grassroots, edited by Lisa Kelly and Patrizia Longhitano
When we put out the call for the Grassroots issue, we hoped for poems from the heart – poems filled with passion, purpose and dealing with themes or ideas that need to be shared. The range of poems, diverse forms and sheer number from all over the world revealed that poets and politics grow intertwined from the same root. But at the same time, all the poems we were drawn to are intensely personal. As a reader, you might or might not agree with the cause, but we hope you agree that the poetry is compelling.
Magma Selected: Rona Luo
Poems
| Sophie Meehan | Letters to Derek Jarman |
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| Jane Clarke | The Women from Crinnagh |
| Elizabeth Gibson | They have put an oxygen mask on the seagull |
| Richard Scott | Still Life with Cornflower |
| Antoine Cassar | Ġazza غزة |
| Anna Bowles | Landscape with Mines |
Articles
| Editorial | When we put out the call for the Grassroots issue, we hoped for poems from the heart – poems filled with passion, purpose and dealing with themes or ideas that need to be shared. The range of poems, diverse forms and sheer number from all over the world revealed that poets and politics grow intertwined… |
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| Grassroots: An exchange of views over email between two poets | (This is an excerpt of the article in the magazine.) 15/6/2024 Hey Joe, I received your email as I’m returning from a week away with my 2-year-old son in Wales, it was our first father-son trip away. The future feels huge to me, much larger since becoming a parent. I feel exhausted but deepened by fatherhood… |
| On the sustaining, nourishing and necessary support of community | What keeps you going when life is too hard? What consoles you? What inspires you? It is hard not to fall into despair. Sometimes it feels impossible to resist. And yet, we need hope. Behaving as if we believe a better world is possible, collectively dreaming futures in which we’re thriving, and everything we do… |
| The ‘Difficult We’ | We are a ‘difficult we’. We are in a pub: an old(ish), largely brown pub in a part of London once rough as fuck! No-one with more than one tooth in their head! And that might be someone else’s! Later it was working class. Now it’s a place out of time and expensive, obviously. We… |
Issue information
Grassroots — Table of Contents 
Supported by Arts Council England