Magma Board

Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber/Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is the Reviews Editor at Poetry London. She co-edited issues 83 (Solitude) and 93 (Liberation) of Magma.

Leo Boix is a Latinx poet based in London. His second collection, Southernmost: Sonnets (Chatto & Windus, 2025), was shortlisted for the Forward Prizes and named a book of the year by The Guardian and The Telegraph. His debut, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (Chatto, 2021), was a Poetry Book Society Wild Card.

Elontra Hall - a Black-American poet based in Northampton - centres much of his work around fatherhood, basketball, relationships and identity. He has been published in HeadFake, Butcher’s Dog (16), Magma (82, 87), Propel (6) Shō (5), Prairie Schooner and had work broadcast on BBC 4’s Poetry Please (Christmas 2022).

Patrizia Longhitano (she/her) is a queer Latinx immigrant poet and visual artist who lives in London. Her childhood was spent between Brazil and Italy. Since 2023, she has been the host of Venn Diagrams, a monthly poetry event. Currently manager of the Oxford Street Poetry Pharmacy bookshop.

BBenedict Newbery works in print production. His poems have appeared in a number of publications including Ambit, The North, PBLJ, Finished Creatures, Other Poetry, The Morning Star and The Alchemy Spoon. He was Magma’s production manager 2017-2020, and was lead editor of Magma 74 - the ‘Work’ issue.

Remembered with love, gratitude and respect. Gboyega Odubanjo (1996–2023) was born and raised in East London. He was the author of three poetry pamphlets: While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press), Two stops short of Barking (The Alternative School of Economics) and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business/New Poets List), winner of the Michael Marks Poetry Award and an Eric Gregory Award. A Barbican Young Poet alumnus, Odubanjo was an editor at bath magg journal and Bad Betty Press, co-chair of Magma and a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, after which he later became a Roundhouse Resident Artist. He was a creative writing tutor on the Creative Future IMPART programme, supporting writers from underrepresented backgrounds. His UK garage single ‘LDN GRLS’ with Love Remain is out with the Sony Music UK label, Black Butter Records. The Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers was established in 2023 to honour his legacy. His collection, Adam, was published by Faber in 2024.

Kathy Pimlott’s collection, the small manoeuvres, is published by Verve Poetry Press (2022). She has three pamphlets with the Emma Press, After the Rites and Sandwiches (2024); Elastic Glue​, (2019) and Goose Fair Night (2016)/ Her poems have been published widely in print and on-line magazines and in many anthologies.

Stav Poleg is the author of The Banquet (shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize 2025) and The City (shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for First Collection 2023), both books published by Carcanet Press. Her poetry is featured in A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker (Knopf, 2025).

Selina Rodrigues’ poetry collections are The Visitors (Wild Pressed Books) and Ferocious (Smokestack). She is an experienced facilitator and poet-in-residence and co-hosts the Shuffle at The Poetry Cafe. Selina has a particular interest and passion for diversity and believes creativity exists in all people and places.

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection ‘Hard Drive’ was published by Carcanet in 2023 and was shortlisted for Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize. He has three pamphlets including ‘The Days That Followed Paris’. He co-edited the ‘Europe’ (70) and ‘Ownership’ (92) issues of Magma and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh.