Issue launches

The Magma Sales Table, being looked after by Jacqueline Saphra Magma Poetry sponsored the reading by Philip Gross and Gillian Clarke that took place during the Ledbury Poetry Festival during the first half of July. Jacqueline Saphra and I, on…

cracking poems - cracking performances - cracking night Photographs by Rebecca Root.

We're thrilled to be heading to the friendly and poetry-packed Ledbury Festival this weekend as sponsors of a reading by Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales and Philip Gross, the 2009 year's winner of the TS Eliot prize. We're proud…

For a devilishly exciting way to spend midsummer eve, we would love for you to join us for the launch reading of Magma 47. The reading takes place on Monday 21 June in the Coffee-House Poetry series at the Troubadour…

Musing on the process of editorship this morning after the the launch of our spring issue, I was amused to discover that the production time of an issue of Magma from conception to delivery is not much short of nine…

What better way to celebrate the longer evenings and the approach of spring than spending an evening in the company of the brilliant poets who have contributed to Magma 46? The spring issue is edited by Jacqueline Saphra with Norbert…

Ever looked at a Poetry Festival programme and wished you could be there to hear some of the readings? Well, here’s a festival you can attend, even though the readings take place as far apart as Tblisi, Geneva, St Andrews,…

Magma 45 is now available. You can read a selection from the issue online and buy the magazine via our website.

Don't miss the launch reading on Monday 16 November at The Troubadour, Earl’s Court, London.

We are delighted to have Catherine Smith and Jacob Polley as guest readers. As usual, all poets published in the issue have the opportunity to read, which will make for a rich and varied programme.

The evening will start at 8 pm sharp, at The Troubadour Coffee House, 265 Old Brompton Road, London SW5 (near Earl’s Court Tube). Tickets are £6.50 / £5.50 concessions.

We hope to see you there!

This year Magma Poetry was lucky enough to be running a workshop at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. This was appropriately titled 'Writing Poetry' and we shared it with Don Paterson, who has just won this year's Forward Prize for his collection, 'Rain'.

Don spent two fascinating hours at the workshop taking questions and talking about the English language lyric poem, and covered large areas of poetic ground, offering us his take on prosody, metre, phonetics and even managing to squeeze in a brief sentence or two on the subject of metaphor.

I'm pleased to say he is writing a book about poetry - publication date still up for grabs - so that those who haven't had a chance to hear some of his insights will be able to read about them - eventually. Those who have been lucky enough to hear Don talk about poetry will know that it's partly his particularly original turn of phrase that is illuminating; for example, the idea that most poetry that uses iambic pentameter is 'magnetised' to the metre or a sonnet is just a 'wee black square' on a white page.

I offered the participants a chance to become editors for an hour so, putting into practice some of Don's insights and suggestions. Split into small groups, they were invited to select which of three very different poems by dead poets (selected so that there was no danger of offending the living) they would choose.

They pursued this task with enormous gusto and there was a wide range of opinions, all of them justifiable, which I'm delighted to say proved the point I was trying to make. Poetry, like all art forms, is a hugely subjective business, and once a poem has reached a certain benchmark of quality (also a subjective matter, I know), selection becomes a matter of the editor's personal taste. This is where Magma has the edge. A rotating editorship means that the flavour of each issue will be different and if one editor returns your poetry, the next one may publish it. Keep sending it in!