In Presiding Spirits we ask a contemporary poet to write a poem which draws on writing from the past. In this issue Vicki Feaver responds to Edward Thomas’s Old Man. Old Man Old Man, or Lads-Love, – in the name…
Do new technologies and multimedia forms affect how we exercise our imaginations when writing and reading poetry? Tim Kindberg delved into this aspect of the soul and the machine by asking some well-known poets for their views. A poem is…
The margins are where the clues to the liveliness and breadth of the text make themselves apparent. Rowdy animals bodied like musical instruments gambol, exact and glorious and gross. They make fanciful noise. Tiny plants spread like gorgeous weeds, rendered…
“You forget parties” Much Possessed John Foggin (Smith / Doorstop, £9.95) Reviewed by Helena Nelson Much Possessed is packed with people. Nearly a quarter of the poems are dramatic monologues from characters as various as Lucifer, Richard III, Myra Hindley,…
We asked three younger poets and four small publishers to think about the gambles they’ve taken in their careers thus far. The question we asked was, very simply, “What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken as a poet/publisher?”, but the answers…
Magma 67, extra review, Claire Crowther Reviews Jeffery Wainwright’s What Must Happen, Carcanet Press, £9.99 What Must Happen Jeffrey Wainwright Carcanet What Must Happen is not as positive as it sounds: things and people go nowhere or break up or…
If all the world’s a page, as one might say, most of it is the margins. As in the ancient tragedies, offstage is where you find the real action. Most people are marginal, by today’s political and economic reckoning –…
I don’t like jazz. Therefore, I had immediate misgivings when confronted with the pastel-painted jazz scene adorning the cover of Hannah Lowe’s latest collection Chan. Not wanting to judge a book by its cover, I forged ahead, only to find…
Test post of Magma video. Jon Stone reading at a Magma lauch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxL-9lO0Z1c Sound recording of Magma 58 2nd Half:
After Memorial, her rendering of military deaths in Homer’s Iliad, Alice Oswald’s seventh collection returns mostly to poems about the natural world. Traditionally poems have described nature either as evidence of God’s handiwork or as a comfort or inspiration for…
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