Magma, North, TLS, Poetry Review

A secondhand bookshop here is selling recent issues of the TLS, North, Magma and Poetry Review for a quid.The've all been going for a long time. The TLS (weekly) has one poem and a few reviews. The others are leading UK poetry magazines with articles and reviews. I've not read them for a year or so. I found them all a worthwhile read.

• The Times Literary Supplement (a tabloid newspaper) has reviews that always include some adverse criticism. The other mags' reviews tend to avoid saying negative things.
• Magma's issues vary according to the guest editor(s) and theme. I read the Physics issue, which wasn't one of the best. They get 5,000 submissions/issue.
• The North has so much in it that there's bound to be something to like. They have guest editors. They've rejected me the last few times I've tried. Decades ago, I used to have more luck - have they changed or have I?
• Poetry Review is the Poetry Society's magazine. If poetry is going to try to distance itself from prose, then the poems in recent Poetry Reviews show the way. Hit'n'miss, but I was pleasantly surprised. What I didn't like were the discussions, interviews and joint reviews - too much waffle and mutual praise. What's wrong with good old-fashioned essays?

In the mags I read there were 2 multi-page sequences that included illustrations - I didn't like them.

There were 3 poems that used graphics in other ways (a flowchart in Poetry Review, a boardgame in Magma, and Bingo in The North - click on the images to see clearer versions). I always want such experiments to succeed. In these examples I didn't see how the words had much to do with the form. Why does the flowchart just use rectangles? Why aren't there snakes in the game? Do the items in each row/column of the bingo card have anything in common?