Editorial

Colette Bryce, Poetry Editor Print deadlines

The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig is a retreat for writers and artists in Ireland that I had the good fortune to visit on several occasions. In the randomly stocked little bookcases in the bedrooms, one would find old dog-eared editions of poetry magazines, some with titles now consigned to history – Writing Women, Slow Dancer, The Wide Skirt, and could happily procrastinate for whole afternoons reading early, roughly cast poems by writers, some of whom went on to become celebrated names and others who, as is the way of things, didn’t quite. The poets among the residents would be known to talk their way into other bedrooms, solely (of course) in pursuit of the literary curiosities within. Back in London, at the Saison Poetry Library, it was possible to lose whole days to this activity, with entire archives at one’s disposal in the bone-crushing moveable stacks.

There would be a certain synchronicity in the browsing process; one would happen upon poems that seemed essential to one’s progress, quite by chance, fortuitous connections in the idiosyncratic path that is a poet’s reading. Opening a copy of the London Magazine, say, from nineteen fifty-seven (I have a foxed and oddly sweet-smelling copy on my desk before me as I write), might offer a snapshot of a ‘moment’ in poetry, as you bent back the covers and turned the pages. You might discover ‘Famous Poet’ by Ted Hughes, himself not yet famous: ‘the dull world gaped / And “repeat that!” still they cry’, or marvel at the only page bearing work by a female author (Mary Reynolds was the lucky lady that year).

Some poems that appeared in smaller magazines never made the final cut for the poets’ collections, and their authors are no doubt grateful they are not endlessly retrievable via Google as they might be today. A subpar poem in a magazine would soon be out of sight and out of mind, except for in the netherworld of archives, or the rickety bookshelves in writing retreats. (Incidentally, if you look closely, you might spot old copies of Poetry London in the writing shed in the new Stephen Frears film, Tamara Drewe.)

So hearing that this, or that, poetry magazine has ‘gone online’ now fills me with dismay, a dismay that is not entirely justified, given the convenience with which I can ‘access’ their contents, and usually free of charge. Online poetry journals are of course not a new phenomenon: many have come and gone since the late Nineties, yet it is surprising how slow they have been to establish a real foothold in the UK poetry publishing scene, for all the exciting possibility suggested by the form. (Several ambitious, more recent ventures could very well be the ones to change all that.)

There are single, outstanding poems I remember from magazines and periodicals that are forever associated in my mind with their original print location; I can even remember where I was when I read them. They are – how can I put this – a part of my life and a part of the material world. This is the beauty of the small magazine, and as much as I try, reading online as yet remains a lesser experience; I tend to scan , rather than read. And I have found myself wondering if poetry – in what it requires of us as readers – is uniquely ill-suited to the restless attention with which we consume a variety of online texts.

Online publishing is the natural field of exploration today, with its promise to offer a neat solution to the economic short-circuit that poetry publishing traditionally presents, yet it is by no means an easy answer. For the time being (in difficult times), the print magazine has as vital a role to play as ever, operating in the ‘moment’ of contemporary poetry, with the website an increasingly essential accessory to the main act.

Colette Bryce, Poetry Editor

The poems in this issue were edited by Colette Bryce; the reviews and features by Tim Dooley.