News

Magma is delighted to congratulate Judy Brown on winning first prize in this year's Poetry London Competition with 'Letter to My Optician'. Judy has been a member of the Magma team and, before that, a member of the City Lit group from which Magma sprang. We have all delighted in her gift for rich and startling imagery whenever her poems have appeared in Magma and elsewhere, and clearly Don Paterson, the competition judge, did too. Judy's first pamphlet collection, Pillars of Salt, was published by Templar Poetry in 2006 and we're sure it won't be long before a more substantial collection of her work appears. Congratulations too to Howard Wright for winning second prize in the competition. Howard is a Magma regular and was our Showcase poet in Magma 28. And congratulations to Matthew Caley for his Commended. Matthew has appeared many times in Magma and featured at many of our readings, even going so far as St Andrews to read for us at the STAnza Festival in 2007.

Magma launches each new issue at the Troubadour Café, in association with Coffee-House Poetry, and has hosted many memorable readings over the years. Because of this close association with Coffee-House Poetry and its organiser, Anne-Marie Fyfe, editor of Magma issue…

We're delighted to congratulate Lorraine Mariner on being nominated for the 2009 Forward Prize for Best First Collection for Furniture (Picador). Magma was the first national magazine to publish Lorraine's poems in the early 2000s and we arranged some of…

I invited each of the four publishers who were shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award to answer a few questions. Peter Hughes from Oystercatcher Press (winner of the award) was first to respond. Now Helena Nelson from HappenStance shares her…

I was pleased to see the creation in 2009 of the Michael Marks Awards, with generous £5000 prizes for an often overlooked area of poetry publishing – the pamphlet. The award ceremony was held on 24 June 2009. Congratulations to…