Listen to My Issue of Magma on the Poetry Library Website

I’m thrilled to say that the issue of Magma Poetry which I edited is now available online at the UK Poetry Library website – including audio recordings of many of the featured poets.

Magma is one of the UK’s leading poetry magazines – its unique feature is its rotating editorship, which means every issue of the magazine offers a fresh and different perspective on contemporary poetry. I’m one of the magazine’s directors and edited issue 34 in 2005.

The UK Poetry Library is a distinguished institution that houses an unrivalled collection of modern poetry published in the UK. Its Poetry Magazines website is an online archive of back issues of leading poetry magazines, including Magma. Audio editions of selected issues form a new feature of the site, and I’m delighted that Magma is one of the first magazines to have its contributors recorded.

The audio edition of Magma 34 includes the text of most of the poems and articles in the issue, as well as MP3 recordings of many poets, including Mimi Khalvati, David Harsent, Susan Wicks, Lorraine Mariner and Alison Brackenbury, as well as Quentin S. Crisp reading the first UK translations of Machi Tawara, who is a huge star in Japan.

The issue also includes my article Poetry in Practice: Creative Flow, for which I interviewed several well-known poets about their creative process. Alastair Campbell is featured in the Guest Choice article, for which he wrote about his favourite poem.

Thanks to the staff at the Poetry Library for doing such an excellent job of the online edition. More details on my poetry blog.

Magma issues 29-33 have also been added to the Poetry Library archive – they include my poem Babel and my reviews of Roddy Lumsden and Tim Cumming, and of the Poetry Book Society’s Quarterly Selections.