Tag: jacqueline gabbitas

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Four magazines, five poets to watch

poetry mags received august 17

A slew of poetry magazines have been arriving the last couple of weeks and I’ve enjoyed ‘discovering’ work by new names. Well, new to me anyway – turns out they’re all accomplished poets, but that doesn’t surprise me. I thought I’d share with you a little about each of the magazines, and a contributor or two to each that caught my attention.

Brittle Star has to get the prize for the most interesting covers. They invariably span front and back, with no writing to spoil the image other than on the spine:

Brittle Star 40, August 17

The magazine is run by Martin Parker and Jacqueline Gabbitas on the proverbial shoestring – and for a little mag they are remarkably innovative in finding ways to keep going. Their latest fundraising initiative is to invite readers to support the magazine via Patreon. As they say on their website, “If only 5% of people who follow us on social media donated $2 (about £1.60) a month we’d be half way to hitting our first goal of £750!” Brittle Star is always well produced and they even hold launch readings for every edition. It’s all pretty impressive. Got to be worth $1 or two a month.

Poems that jumped out at me were those by Jack Houston and Barbara Cumbers. Jack’s ‘Separate Towers’ had just the right amount of bonkers humour and painful poignancy to float my boat, with the building of a model cathedral in lolly sticks serving as a metaphor for relationship issues :

Worms may well turn in the earth but we’ll be adhered
to this task until this entire tube of UHU’s been used.

Barbara Cumbers paints a mesmerising picture of a young girl’s quest for control (revenge? stubbornness?) by writing smaller and smaller.

[…]  Once, a teacher set me lines –

I had to write “I must writer bigger” fifty times.
I wrote them on the back of a postage stamp. (‘Small’)

Next, the mighty Magma, with its ten-strong editorial board, administrator and freelance staff, immaculately produced and also with a distinctive look, in particular its square format. I have a love-hate relationship with Magma, partly because I’ve had too many submissions rejected (!), but also because I’ve never been able to get the feel for what the magazine is looking for, or what it’s about – its heart, if you like. It may be down to the fact that the editors rotate and change from one edition to the next.

Magma 68 is on the theme of ‘Margins’, so it’s not surprising that we get a good number of poems on the heartfelt/hardcore spectrum – from protest and despair to death, slaughter and eco-apocalypse. I really warmed to Ellie Danak‘s ‘Dear Lab-Man’, a mysterious love-letter with ‘Fatal Attraction’ written all over it –

[…]
There’s no excuse for my welling up,
strangling all that tubing to spell out LOVE.
My lips can distil blood. Meet me
in the fume cupboard tonight.

But if it’s strangeness you’re after then Obsessed with Pipework is self-proclaimed ‘poetry with strangeness and charm’. It’s another double spread cover this time featuring artwork by Graham Higgins:

Obsessed with Pipework August 17

Obsessed with Pipework is edited by Charles Johnson, and although my poems in this issue sadly lost most of their formatting, I can’t hold it against Charles as he’s been a fine supporter of my work and I owe him one. And besides the poems are all the more strange for it.

I particularly enjoyed three poems by Sue Kindon, of whom I know nothing (and her ‘biog’ in the magazine was sketchy, you might say – although it had strangeness and charm). We have a poem about blockages (actual and metaphorical), while another features a woman on a cruise, on the verge of betraying her husband with the moon –

[…]
I sense that rare blue-eyed look
you keep in reserve, to anchor me.  (‘Anniversary on Board’)

I liked the subverting of nice middle-class themes (‘I’ve chosen something marble-veined / and a safe brie’) with undertones of something much harder-hitting (‘Sacred places are sawn off  […] Old gods wander the desert of dementia’).

And finally Under the Radar, another well-respected and long-running magazine, published by Nine Arches Press and edited by Jane Commane. This edition features a review of The Swell, Jessica Mookherjee’s pamphlet published by Telltale Press last autumn. My eye was also caught by a poem by Julian Dobson, partly because I’d seen his work in Magma and had nearly chosen to mention him then. So, a name I hadn’t met before and then I see it in two magazines. Like me he must have done some serious submitting around six to nine months ago.

In choosing ‘Meet the neighbour’ I’m starting to wonder why I’m drawn to these on-the-face-of-it memoir poems into which you can read as much menace as you like. I once told a poet friend how much I’d enjoyed a poem of hers in ‘The Rialto’ – ‘…it gave me the creeps! Really menacing!’ only to have her reply that it was supposed to be positive and comforting – hmm! So here we have Julian Dobson’s ‘rumple-haired man from the basement flat’ who ‘had a way of vanishing before Dad got home’, while Dad has

No truck with stories, a reddening head
bursting with hellfire and helplessness.
We found crevices and corners
in the echoing house.

Nonetheless, I find myself worrying for him, and enjoying the not-knowing of the poem.

So there we are – another five poets I want to keep an eye out for and read more of.

I should add that these were contributor copies, apart from Under the Radar which was a a publisher copy. I do subscribe to magazines but I limit it to one or two mags per year, on a rotating basis. I know it’s expensive to support all the myriad poetry mags out there, and this is my tactic to do so in an affordable manner. It’s not only interesting to keep an eye on new writing, but it also informs my submissions – where to send, which magazine would a poem suit, that kind of thing.

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The Reading List, week 2

The Reading LIst, week 2 - Poetgal

The weather has been so good lately it’s tempting to go out for a walk (or a pub lunch!) rather than read. But I’m enjoying the discipline – I find last thing at night and first thing in the morning are good times to read. This week I read through five more collections.

Hangman’s Acre – Janet Sutherland (Shearsman 2009)

I love the way this collection is shaped, framed by poems of love, separation and reunion. In between there are tender explorations of ageing, loss and grief. But there’s much more than that: Janet’s poetry of the South Downs, spirituality as seen through nature, the death of animals and a powerful rage against female genital mutilation. And more – such as the short ‘Bone Monkey’ sequence, a precursor to the more recent collection of that name. Janet’s poems are spare and precise, a joy to read over. Favourite poem: ‘A Walk with Five Dewponds’.

Crow – Ted Hughes (Faber 1972)

At school, we read half a dozen Ted Hughes poems and I memorised ‘Hawk Roosting’ for my A level English. Reading Hughes got me interested in writing poetry and I’ve always regarded him with awe. And yet reading Crow made it so obvious that I’ve only scratched a very small bit of the surface when it comes to his work. This was actually a two-day job, even without re-reading as I went along (one of my ‘reading list’ rules). What to say about Crow? A masterclass in extended metaphor. I would say ‘a roller coaster ride’ if that weren’t such a  stupid cliche – gruesome, comedic, horrifying, tender and raging, you could say it was all those things. Above all it challenged me, pushed me into things I didn’t like, made me want to put the book down, but just as strong was the urge to read on. I had a few nightmares. But it was worth it. Favourite poem: ‘Lovesong’.

Earthworks – Jacqueline Gabbitas (Stonewood Press, 2012)

More lovely poetry of nature, from close (and slightly spooky) encounters with creatures both dead and alive in forests, on hills and in the garden (‘Bird Buried’) to pagan celebrations, and everywhere the feel and smell of clay, soil, peat, coal and all that lies buried in the earth. There’s a touching memorial which appears to be to the poet’s mother (‘In principio’) and a couple of poems in some kind of dialect – which I struggled a bit with as I couldn’t ‘hear’ the voice, but no doubt would come to life in a reading. Many rich seams of meaning and experience to be uncovered in this short (and neatly packaged) collection. Favourite poem: ‘Bird Buried’.

Hugo Williams – Dear Room (Faber, 2006)

I think Hermione Lee in the cover blurb nicely sums up what I think of Hugo Williams – “.. a poet of such intimate charm, such grace and cunning, and such ordinary comical sadness”. I’ve dipped into this collection many times and it was easy to read it all through in one go. I know Williams’ work is regarded in some quarters as less than heavyweight. But personally I love the ‘accessible’ poems with their deadpan delivery and crushing irony, the small poems telling of big joy (eg ‘Pieces of Sky’) and even bigger melancholy (eg ‘The Cry’).  So much to love in this collection – OK it’s not Crow, but who says you can’t enjoy both chocolate and curly kale? Favourite poem: ‘All the Way Down.’

Kim Lasky – Petrol, Cyan, Electric (Smith/Doorstop 2013)

This pamphlet is a real gem which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks award in 2013 and I don’t know why it hasn’t had the sort of widespread publicity and acclaim that it deserves. The poems link seemingly diverse topics as the science of colour (‘Newton Sees the Seventh Colour’), early experiments in electricity, a mother’s gradual loss of speech and slow descent – ‘We are past the fact of muscle, flesh and nails.’ (‘As if the very air’) and the poet’s imagined meeting with her father in 1944. It really does get better with every reading because there is always something more to discover and enjoy. Favourite poem: ‘There are not enough words in the language.’

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015.

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And so to bed (and Bath)

Actually I wish I was still in my bed right now as I’m feeling a tad slug-like after another late night ‘up in town’ as my mum used to say. (It was always ‘up’ to London – even at the station announcers would always say “attention please on the up platform…” – I wonder if one goes ‘up’ to London from points north? Hmmm.)

reading pile, may 20th 2015

But the ‘bed’ reference is more to do with what’s on my bedside table in the process of being read. The latest additions are a copy of Brittle Star issue 36 and a sleek little pamphlet called ‘Earthworks’ by Jacqueline Gabbitas. I was fortunate to meet Jacqueline and her Brittle Star co-editor Martin Parker last night at the launch event, at the Barbican Library. She was a warm and effervescent host, a hugs-rather-than-handshakes person who made everyone feel like long-lost friends. It was a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Oddly enough I was asked to read first, which is becoming a habit – I think I’ve been on first in the last four readings I’ve done. I also noticed I made a teensy error in the poem that appears in the magazine (‘practice’ instead of ‘practise’) but thankfully I wasn’t had up by the grammar police. My apologies nonetheless.

I was dead impressed with the whole operation – the magazine and other publications from Stonewood Press, their imprint, are beautifully produced, the event was well organised and well attended and they even provided free wine, Pimm’s & strawberries. Nice! Not only that, but it was a impressive range of readers (poetry and short stories). I particularly enjoyed a two-hander from Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire, who read a selection of poems from their project ‘London Undercurrents’ featuring tales of feisty London women from different periods of the city’s history. Also very nice to hear (and speak to) writers Jonny Wiles, Ruth Brandt and Stewart Foster.

Also on my current reading list is the May issue of Poetry (the cover alone has been giving me strange dreams). I suppose one of the pleasures of editing a monthly poetry journal (as opposed to the more usual half-yearly) is the ability to include longer pieces if you so wish, or to focus on a single theme or style. April’s edition was dedicated to ‘breakbeat poetry’, or a celebration of ‘new American poetry in the age of hip-hop’ as Don Share says in his introduction.  This month the magazine opens with a 35-page long poem by Frank Bidart. Equally daunting is a 22-page essay by Donald Revell entitled ‘Scholium.’ I’m never sure of the best way to tackle longer pieces – I find the amount of concentration needed makes them impossible to digest in one sitting. So it’s usual case of start, skim, and go back. Or not, depending on how gripped I am.

And finally, Sonofabook – a new twice-yearly journal from CBEditions, a mix of poetry, short stories and non-fiction pieces which looks very promising. There’s an offer on at the moment as an incentive to subscribe. Sonofabook features a guest editor for each issue, and is the brain child of publisher Charles Boyle, who incidentally writes a very honest blog by the same name – check out this excoriating piece about Faber, for example!

Siegfried Baber pamphlet launch, photo by www.dotandlucyphotography.co.uk
Photo of Siegfried Baber by http://www.dotandlucyphotography.co.uk

Just a quick mention about last week’s event in Bath, which was such a pleasure for me – to unfurl the Telltale rollerbanner in Toppings bookshop and to introduce our latest Telltale poet Siegfried Baber and his pamphlet When Love Came To The Cartoon Kid. When I began the whole Telltale thing I didn’t realise how much enjoyment and satisfaction I would get from helping other poets on their way. The more you give to these things the more they seem to pay back. That’s not to say I’m not still ambitious for myself – but the two things (helping yourself and helping others) aren’t incompatible. Personally I think I they balance each other up.

It reminds me of a singing teacher who once told me that the way not to ‘run out of breath’ is to support it and keep fuelling it, rather than giving up too soon. If you believe all you have is a small amount of breath, that’s all you’ll ever have. But if you trust your lungs to do what they’re good at you’ll find there’s a lot more inside you than you think.