Sawing Rainbows: Gottfried Benn
I first came across the work of Gottfried Benn as little as seven years ago when I read Michael Hamburger’s The Truth of Poetry, a book which ever since has been something of a touchstone for me whenever I find…
Listen to Poems from the Launch of Magma 57
The launch reading for Magma 57 was a buzzing event with well over 100 in the audience. On this page we’ve picked a few highlights and some distinctive styles so if you were not there you can get a flavour…
A new kind of poetry?
A hundred years ago Ezra Pound was busy creating modern poetry in London. He helped Yeats to write more directly and more symbolically, then set about “breaking the pentameter” by following T E Hulme and others to create imagism and,…
Blog Review 30 – Katherine Stansfield Reviews ‘The Elephant Tests’ by Matt Merritt
Almost all the poems in Matt Merritt’s third collection, The Elephant Tests, are concerned with the outdoors. The landscapes in question are sometimes urban but more often rural, though that’s not to suggest that these poems are concerned purely with…
Blog Review 29 – Stephen Payne Reviews ‘Salt Pier’ by Dore Kiesselbach
The opening poem of Salt Pier, ‘Cleave’, begins: “Close to the city, a deer/ leaves a hoofprint/ in our yard.” To a surprising extent, this first sentence provides a template for the whole collection. Rarely is a book of poems…
Blog Review 28 – Andrew Shields Reviews ‘The Rose of Toulouse’ by Fred D’Aguiar
One rarely discussed distinction between poets is between those who capitalize the first words of lines, and those who don't. In general, you either do or you don't, but in The Rose of Toulouse, Fred D'Aguiar switches back and forth…
The Final Front Ear
How many ears does Mr Spock have? Three! The left, the right and the final front. Maybe working on Magma 57 has addled my brain, but the old playground joke seems to me about the best summary of the role…
Who said it? A male or a female poet?
Every competition it’s the same thing, we poets get sucked into endless debates on Facebook as to whether there is a ‘male’ of ‘female’ way of writing and whether this is responsible for female writers getting less coverage. So here’s…
Blog Review 27 – Jennifer Wong Reviews Angela Kirby’s ‘A Scent of Winter’
Following her previous collection Dirty Work, Angela Kirby’s latest book of poems, A Scent of Winter, is a substantial and delightful read that combines craft, humour and intelligence. Readers can readily find a handful of poems such as ‘Green Wine’…
Then Again, Who Am I To Judge…?
Well, in fact, Philip Gross, himself a winner of the National Poetry Competition, the T.S. Eliot Prize and Wales Book of the Year. Here he gives a view from the Magma Poetry Competition 2013 judge's bench: I'm starting this with caution. Even…
Supported by Arts Council England