Tag Archives: Finished Creatures

Finished Creatures rises to the surface

Issue 5 of Jan Heritage’s lovingly produced Finished Creatures, includes the work of 60 poets, each offering a different interpretation on the theme of ‘surface’. I was delighted to read my contribution at the magazine’s Zoom launch this month, along side stablemates Clare Best, Carole Bromley, Susannah Hart, Cheryl Moskowitz, Paul Stephenson and many others.

The full roll call includes Dean Atta, Judy Brown, Matt Bryden, Oliver Comins, Claire Dyer, Charlotte Gann, Maria Isakova Bennett, Karen Izod, Maria Jastrzebska, Tess Jolly, Lisa Kelly, Jane Lovell, Antony Mair, Jenny Mitchell, Fiona Moore, Jeremy Page, Penelope Shuttle, Richard Skinner and Helen Tookey.

“The theme of Surface invited so many beautiful and intelligent responses: new landscapes, delicate textures and intricate stories of concealment and exposure,” writes editor, Jan Heritage, in her foreword. “This selection of poems asks the reader to move from one environment to another and to continually readjust the focus as we stand by icy foreshores and frozen lakes, or on the crust of the Earth with its ancient fractures and secrets: as we climb mountains and fells, or look out to sea ‘keeping watch for the future.’

“Our eye is drawn from infinite horizons to the miniscule detail of fungi, moss, mulch and skin. We are weathered, windswept and often drenched as the climate and seasons change; sometimes we are invited to curl up and hide.

“These are poems that ask us to get soaked and muddy; to dive below the surface of rivers, oceans and dreams; to excavate for lost people or to hear the hearbeat of the not yet born. We are asked to look closely, to look again and, as Lisa (Kelly) says, ‘Consider’.”

To buy a copy of Finished Creatures (issue 5) or to subscribe to the biannual magazine, please visit: www.finishedcreatures.co.uk The next submissions window will open early in the new year, with a new theme, so keep your eye on the website for news.

Finished Creatures is one year old

Finished Creatures (issue 3)_0001The biannual literary journal Finished Creatures has just celebrated its third issue with almost 70 pages of poetry on the theme of Balance.

Its luxurious crisp, white pages hold poems by Jill Abram, Isabelle Baafi, Claire Booker, Rachel Bower, Claire Collison, Martin Crucefix, Claire Dyer, Josh Ekroy, Susannah Hart, Hilaire, Matt Howard, Jenny Mitchell, Jessica Mookherjee, Matt Riches and Penelope Shuttle among a host of other poets.

It’s the brainchild of editor, Jan Heritage. And as so often is the case, she’s a gifted poet herself:

Finished Creatures is a new platform for emerging and experienced poets: an independent, no profit, printed magazine, carefully produced with an eye for detail and originality.

Here you will find poets engaging with the realities of the Anthropocene. You’ll find work that considers human and non-human beings with equal interest and affinity, and which sometimes explores the territory in between.  

Alongside environmental concerns and ecopoetry are poems that draw on personal experience, politics, myth and science to express something new and restless. Finished Creatures (issue 3)_0002

The theme of Balance was chosen before the virus took hold. But there are poems here that seem to foretell: chaos and apocalypse feature, as do gods – of mischief or of no use. Time takes on new meaning. Things disappear from view, perspectives change. But there is also the celebration of small triumphs, the ordinary and the near at hand.

The next issue is being guest-edited by Corrupted Poetry – a collective comprising Nic Stringer, Fiona Larkin and also Michelle Penn, whose poem, portrait of you as time, is featured on the inside cover of the Balance issue.

Issue One FCIf you’d like to submit your work, you have until July 31st to send up to four of your unpublished poems on the theme of Stranger.

Copies of the magazine cost £7.00 +1.50 p&p. ORDER DIRECT FROM THE PUBLISHER: poetry@finishedcreatures.co.uk    Or via: http://www.paypal.me/creaturespoetrymag

For more information, or to buy a copy of any of the first three issues: Airbourne, Risk or Balance, please follow this link: Finished Creatures