Latest from Poetry Salzburg Review

It’s always a joy when Poetry Salzburg Review drops onto my door mat, with its Austrian postmark,  gloriously surreal cover and meaty, 180 or so pages of new poetry, translations, reviews and interviews.

Issue 31 is a particular treat for me, as it contains two of my poems, alongside work by Jackie Wills, Sean O’Brien, Robert Peake, Hugo Ball (writer of the Dada Manifesto and co-founder of the infamous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich 1916), Carole Bromley, James Caruth, Jessica Mookherjee, John Lyons, Richard Skinner, Ruth Bidgood, Marjorie Sweetko and Robert Hampson, among many others.

There’s a good selection of international work in this issue, including poets with connections to South Africa, America, Australia, Canada, Trinidad, India, Cuba, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Mexico, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. It’s refreshing to hear voices and styles informed by very different cultural backgrounds.  

Poetry Salzburg Review is ” one of the most stimulating eclectic and certainly international outlets for quality contemporary poetry,” says the poetry magazine’s newest editorial board member, Keith Hutson. He joins Vahni Capildeo, Robert Dassanowsky and editor Wolfgang Görtschacher in selecting what goes into the bi-annual magazine.  With several thousand submissions a year, this is no easy matter, but Hutson is clear about the task. “It seems to me that the journal’s only aim is to find and publish poetry that feels important – whatever the subject matter – and in the search for these poems, established writers are welcomed and new writers are celebrated.”

This issue has a fascinating interview with novelist and poet Elaine Feinstein, whose many impressive credits include translating the brilliant Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, thus helping to secure her a place in the cannon of great women poets writing in a language other than English. I for one am hugely grateful to her.

Issue 31 also offers readers fourteen late sonnets (most of them previously unpublished) by the poet Peter Russell, who was a protégé of TS Elliott and long-term correspondent with Ezra Pound. Plus a chance to read a generous selection of work by the recently deceased Frances Galleymore.

Poetry Salzburg Review is published twice yearly. To submit your own work, or buy a copy of Autumn 2017 (issue 31) or take out a subscription, click on the following link: Poetry Salzburg Review

 

Donald Trump has read Magma 67

In a parallel universe, Donald Trump has read Magma’s Bones & Breath issue and is discovering that poetry can bite back!

In their introduction to the issue, co-editors Rob A Mackenzie and A.B. Jackson ask “how can poetry bring fresh perspective in the face of socio-political crisis?” Five poets attempt an answer in a though-provoking feature that’s a must-read in the aftermath of Brexit and Trump.

Making something happen within its ice-cool pages are voices from across the globe including Caroline Bird, Claire Booker, Alison Brackenbury, Vahni Capildeo, Martyn Crucefix, Isobel Dixon, John Greening, Anja Konig, Stav Poleg, Richard Price and David Wheatley.

Ilya Kaminsky’s searing poems ‘The Map of Bone and Opened Valves’ and ‘Our Boys Drag a Soldier into a Sunlit Piazza’ bring the banal horror of contemporary war into subtle and devastating perspective. Asif Khan, Dzifa Benson, Alistair Noon, Theodoros Chiotis, Eleanor Livingstone and Juana Adcock share their thoughts on Brexit and Poetry and there is explosive wordplay from selected poet Holly Corfield Carr including her ‘Z’ – a highly inventive riff on letters of the alphabet.

A Magma launch is always a gold star event in the calendar, so I was thrilled to be one of the contributors invited to read in front of a buzzing audience packing the L -shaped London Review Bookshop in central London.

Performing page poetry can be something of a challenge, but we were lucky to enjoy a range of voices, including the poised and incisive Martin Crucefix, a delightfully bubbly Alison Brackenbury and bucket loads of wit from Nicki Heinen and  Holly Corfield Carr.

Issue 67 continues Magma’s series of inviting poets to create a new poem in response to work by their favourite poet. In this issue, it’s Guggenheim Award winner Cate Marvin who was inspired by Charlotte Mew’s ‘The Quiet House’ to create her own homage in the shape of ‘My Father’s Liquor Cabinet’.

“The Quiet House contains one of my all-time favorite poetic statements: ‘A rose can stab you from across the street/ deeper than any knife’.” says Cate Marvin. “I wanted to chose a poet that not everyone might be familiar with because this is one of the pleasures we can provide for one another as readers.

“It’s times like these [Trump’s election] that we truly need poetry. Not just to read it, but to write it, and write a lot of it. . . . My sense of the impact of the election is that Americans (half of us anyway) now know what it feels like to be an exile in one’s own country.”

Claire Crowther, Katy Evans Bush, Lisa Kelly and Jon Sayers review some of the latest poetry fare, including ‘Float’ by Anne Carson, ‘Sunshine’ by Melissa Lee-Houghton, ‘The Further Adventures of the Lives of the Saints’ by Patrick Mackie, and ‘Noir’ by Charlotte Gann.

To buy a one off copy of Magma 67, order a subscription to the magazine, or check on submission windows, please visit: www.magmapoetry.com

Cover : Bahar Yurukoglu.