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[SUBMISSIONS NOW CLOSED]
Call for Submissions: Magma 44 ‘the Vertical Dimension’

by Tim Kindberg

I’m delighted to announce that I will be editing Magma 44 with Rosie Shepperd as assistant editor. We are very excited about putting together next summer’s edition from your poetry contributions and a fresh Magma mix of articles. We are already taking submissions and look forward to reading many more. Magma 44 will be published in July 2009.

The theme for Magma 44 will be the vertical dimension: roots and aspirations.

By way of explanation, I once suggested to someone that he was drawn to mountains because it was the only place where he could have his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds at the same time. His response is lost to posterity but this example serves to illustrate the theme for Magma 44. We invite poems about whatever is above or below our day-to-day frame of reference, particularly in relation to our roots and aspirations. For example, do you consider yourself a roots person, or a sky person? Or between: perhaps a mountain would suit you — maybe a small one? Or is a roof garden more your kind of hybrid between earth and sky? Then again, are you stuck in the mud? Or have you lost your roots? Do you search for them? Did you never have any? Were you single-parented, or double? When you move, is it towards heaven or hell? Do you fly? Or dive? Or burrow?

Perhaps you live without gravity altogether, and verticality is a nonsense to you. Then you are excused. In any case, we will accept poems on other topics. On-theme or off, we look forward to reading your work.

The deadline for submissions is the end of February. Please see the Contributions page for details of how to submit your poems.

Comments (12)

  2. The end of February. It’s on the contributions page but I’ve added it to the post, thanks for asking.

  3. I would like to submit several poems I have recently translated into English by a poet from Kosovo. The poems reflect the curret political crisis going on in Kosovo. Please let me kow if you are interested.

  4. Hello Peter. Thanks for your offer. I can only say that it’s not possible to tell without the work itself in front of us whether it is of interest, but we carefully read whatever poets – or translators – would like to submit to Magma.

  5. Will there any additional rewards, financial or otherwise, for poets of the selected poems?

    Will the selected poets be given a free hard-copy of that particular publication which has their work?

    Upon selection, will a(n) (auto)biography of the poet be included within the publication?

    I believe this is an international competition, and open to all across the globe, and across all ages. Please correct me if this is incorrect.

    Will poems irrelevant to the selected theme still be considered for selection? – Will they have an equal chance to succeed?

    – Thanks.

  6. We regret that, like almost all the other UK poetry magazines, Magma is able to make payments only for poems and prose articles that are commissioned by the editors.

    All contributors receive a free copy of the issue in which they appear. They can also order up to 5 copies of the issue at the reduced price of £5 per copy, post free. The normal retail price is £5.95 or £6.70 by post.

    A short biographical note is included for each contributor who wishes to supply one.

    Magma is a magazine, not a competition, but yes, poems are welcome from everywhere in the world.

    As for your last question: obviously, the point of having a theme is to include poems that relate to it, in preference to those that do not. Other things being equal, I would prefer to select on-theme poems to others. However, this being poetry, other things are rarely equal when considering whether to publish poem A or poem B. In reality the editorial choice involves weighing up many factors concerning both individual poems and the collection as a whole. So I would take any statement of editorial policy with a pinch of salt. By the way, I say this as an editor but I won’t presume to speak for other Magma editors.

  7. Mr. Kindberg (and I hope you will be kind), I notice your poems have around the same number of lines as sonnets. Is that just coincidence, or do you only print short work?

    Rhoda Greenstone

  8. It’s true that we seldom select poems of more than about a Magma page, although they commonly exceed the 14 lines of a sonnet — and of course are often in other forms. But we take all submissions on their merits, which of course for the most part concern factors more important than length. As my previous comment on this page suggests, we do not have any absolute editorial policies.

  9. Hi. Please can you tell me if email submissions receive a yes or no comment reply as snail mail does (with SAE). Thanks.

  10. Hi Abegail,

    Yes, we e-mail everyone who submits poems by e-mail, to let them know whether their work has been accepted.

  12. Christopher – as we are a poetry magazine, I’m afraid we don’t consider photography submissions.

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