Magazine updates

• The Interpreter's House has a new editor and address - Simon Curtis, 9 Glenhurst Road, Mannamead, Plymouth, PL3 5LT.
• Ben Wilkinson gives "14" a favourable write-up on his blog, listing some magazines that have disappeared over the years (most recently "Pen Pusher")
• Litro's deadline for "Street Fiction" is 10th April.
• For their summer issue Ambit wants poetry and prose and illustration from writers under 35 years old. Deadline Monday 24 April.
• The latest issue of "The Dark Horse" has arrived. The editorial (like that of the Rialto) mentions gender balance. The final page includes a letter from a poet who feels that their work was mis-reviewed in the previous issue.
• Rialto 71 has arrived. The poetry as usual ranges from thin (2 words/line) poems to fat prose layouts, from trad sonnets (Neil Powell's has initial Caps, and ends with "For first love never disappears; it sets,/ A pearl one neither loses nor forgets") to multi-indented pieces (though in other ways Rosie Shepperd's piece is fairly mainstream). There are long poems, and one-idea 4-liners. Some pages have 3 poems. There are poems by Cowper and Robert Burns, by poets with many books to their names (Brownjohn, Neil Powell, Peter Bland, etc), and by at least one first-timer. My favourite poems were by Andrew Nightingale, Christina Dunhill, Katrina Naomi and Andrew Bailey ("Glass", though the layout's quirky)
  The type of prose ingredients vary in each issue. In this issue Mackmin's editorial fills an A4 page. Later, 3 poets present 2 drafts of a poem, describing the effect that a workhop had on the re-writes. There are 2 pages of poetry news and 2 letters.
  Most significantly, Nathan Hamilton brings his "poets under 35" selection to a close with an article that includes a couple of brief critiques. He writes: it's my feeling that, unless the primary subject of a poem remains language (directly or indirectly) ... it is likely to appear naive or drift towards unexamined cliché .... If one has a 'subject' to write about ... one might be better off writing in prose. Later he writes: Jacques Lacan, who has filtered into the literary education of all young poets now ....
  I remain unconvinced that one repeatedly needs to shout about linguistic instability in one's poems. Like sound effects or many other linguistic features, it's unavoidable whether or not one foregrounds it, and the amount of foregrounding can vary considerably within and between poems. I think most poets (and many readers) know by now that it's risky to wax lyrical about rainbows or the moon. I don't think we need "touches [that] gesture within the poem text as well as, from without, in, and, from within, out ... at the same time evoking (or ironising) an older style lyric utterance of a gesturing poem". I think Andrew Nightingale's "The Pioneers" manages to be entertaining while providing fans of Lacan or semiotics all the essay material they need.
  I didn't like this issue's selection of U-35 poets as much as previous selections. I didn't get what Miriam Gamble's game was, nor did I understand what Ben Borek's Wordsworth re-write was for (and why does only one line begin with a lower case?). Holly Hopkins' piece was ok but nothing new.

The Dark Horse, issue 25

I look forward to the arrival of "The Dark Horse". The recent issue has some articles on poetry marketing that try to answer questions like: Why do people agree to write blurbs? Why are anthologies like "Identity Parade" published?

• "Blurbonic Plague" by Dennis O'Driscoll - As the pseudonymous Harvey Porlock noted, 'Reading reviews of modern poetry is like attending prize-giving in a small, caring primary school: everyone has done terribly well, it's all absolutely marvellous', p.11
• "The Anthology Business" by John Lucas - Lumsden appears to have no love for language or the possibilities of prose rhythms. Nor ... does he show much ability to get beyond cliche ... I don't want to damn Lumsden's enterprise by such means. For all I know, he undertook to write these head notes with the enthusiasm of a man condemned to the stocks. Who in his right mind would want to produce what amounts to 85 blurbs, where the adjectives are selected much as buttons are from the button box ... And, to repeat, there are good poems aplenty in the anthology, p.25

To provide some balance there's an 8 page review by Rory Waterman of William Logan's "Our Savage Art: poetry and the Civil Tongue" - too often he roots out the bad whilst neglecting the good ... Logan thinks that the majority of writers are praised too highly and expect too much, p.76

Reviews, poems and other articles complete this tasteful offering. I was glad to see that Craig Arnold's "Uncouplings" uses anagrams -

the I in relationship
is the heart I slip on
a lithe prison ...

our listening skills
are silent killings