Channel Magazine + Spelt Advent poetry

We’re several days into Advent already, and I’m enjoying Spelt Magazine’s YouTube calendar with its pithy four line poems popping out from each day’s window. My tiny poem is due on day 14. Check them out here: https://speltmagazine.com/spelt-advent-calendar-2021/

“An issue of a magazine, more so than a collection or anthology, marks its content as belonging to a particular moment in time,” write Channel‘s editors.

“There’s a weightiness to the thought that the work in Issue 5 belongs to a moment in which ways of living and working are hybrid and ever-changing. They align to the flux we find ourselves within, evoking a sense of untetheredness.”

So congratulations to Cassia Gaden Gilmartin and Elizabeth Murtough for bringing together work which reflects the times but avoids the pitfalls of over-stating the obvious. Their biannual print magazine is published in Dublin, and focuses on the interconnection between humans and nature.

Poets in issue 5 include Aiyejinna Abraham O, Pragya Bhagat, Claire Booker, Olga Dugan, Adam van Graan, Cliona O’Connell, Jackson Jesse Nash, Rhona McAdam, Marion Oxley, Cheryl Pearson, Joel Scarfe, Ojo Taiye and Carolyne Wright. Many of the writers are from Ireland, Canada, the United States or the UK, but in this issue alone, there’s also beautiful work from Nigeria, India, South Africa and South Korea.

The magazine also carries three short stories and three essays, including a deeply moving poetic diary of a miscarriage, entitled ‘Snowbird’ by Fergus Hogan.

I love the way Channel launches its issues with a mix of pre-recorded readings by contributors, interspersed with photos, nature videos and art work. You can dip into issue 5’s launch at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie6gJGo7R8I I get to read my two poems at 59 mins 45 secs in.

To order a copy of Channel or submit your work, click on https://channelmag.org/current-issue/

The cover image for issue 5 is by Kevin Mooney: https://kevinmooney.org/

Words for the Wild – the magic of nature

 

Visually sumptuous, verbally lively – the webzine Words For The Wild is a joyful way of spending time with words and images that relate to Nature.

So a big thank you to poet Hilaire for introducing me to the webzine, and to editors Amanda Oosthuizen and Louise Taylor for posting my poem ‘New Arrival’.

To read it, please click here: New Arrival The same link will lead you through to stories and poems by a raft of gifted writers, including Shanta Acharya, Kathryn Bevis, Stephen Bone, Alison Brackenbury, Maggie Butt, Caroline Davies, Kate Firth, Hugh Greasley, Chris Hardy, Hilaire and S.A. Leavesley.

Submissions of prose and poetry are welcome year round, with changing themes. Your work can already have been published elsewhere (subject to copywrite). So far, they’ve covered the themes of Jungle, Fruit, Gift, and New Build.

The ethos of Words for the Wild is one of celebration and action. “We are writers who love the countryside, and we want to stop the kind of development that will destroy our gorgeous green land; we want to conserve it for future generations. Of course we need houses but we also need to protect wildlife and retain these pockets of peacefulness where we can walk our dogs or jog or cycle or build dens, play or paint, or simply wander and think.”

Words for the Wild has published a paperback anthology of poems and stories (£6.40 from Words For The Wild) profits of which go to support the community campaign, AADD, which has just succeeded in preventing a housing development being built that would have threatened ancient woodland. More information at: Action Against Destructive Development