|
This
page contains a list of recommended web links, which will take you
to sites that I have found to be of use and/or of interest. Click
on the red buttons to go to sections further down the page, or just
scroll down.
Print
Journals |
Publishers |
Authors |
Databases |
Buying
Books |
Webzines
Poetry
Library of Great Britain — Online magazine database –
includes some back issues of Shearsman, but also several other
magazines, rare old issues and more recent publications alike. An invaluable
resource with good design.
Jacket is
the best literary webzine that I have come across. Edited by
Australian poet John Tranter, Jacket pursues a resolutely independent
path, but is markedly friendly to the more innovative strain in
modern writing. The magazine is genuinely international in character.
Jacket is actually off the web.
The
Argotist is
a busy new website, edited by Jeffrey Side, and carries poems,
essays and interviews with a wide range of authors.
alligatorzine is
a Dutch/English magazine edited by Kurt Devrese in Ghent.
The
Drunken Boat a
fine US-based webzine.
Fascicle – edited
by Tony Tost, this is the best newcomer on the block. A huge compendium
of fascinating material, both original English-language poetry and
translations. New issues come about once a year.
Flashpoint – A
mixture of the fascinating and the infuriating. Worth the time, though.
Free
Verse – Good US webzine; poetry, interviews, and essays.
Issue 9 had a good section of "experimental" Irish poetry, which
features a number of Shearsman authors.
Freebase
Accordion Peter
Manson's site, which is not really a magazine but is close
enough.
GreatWorks – Peter
Philpott's webzine. Of particular interest here is Philpott's
own long poem sequence In the Present Historic Sense, which
is in the archive area now, but can be accessed from the Quick
Index. That long poem-sequence has since been collected in Peter
Philpott's Shearsman volume Textual Possessions. Well worth
constant checks, as the site updates with new work frequently.
Green Integer Review —
edited by Douglas Messerli, this is an online offshoot of the excellent
Green Integer Press. First issue was in January 2006. The link here
takes you to the press home page; cick on the Review link top-right
to get to the 'zine.
Intercapillary
Space — Edmund Hardy's blogzine, which includes
poems and book reviews, new in January 2006. This 'zine has provided
a welcome home for some quality reviewing, interviews, essays and,
more recently, new poetry.
Litter is
a promising online magazine, and an offshoot of Nottingham's excellent
Leafe Press.
Pages –
is the online continuation of Robert Sheppard's long-dormant journal.
Poetry and criticism, and well worth following. It's in a blog
format which is ideal for this venture.
PORES -
which stands for POetry RESearch. Some excellent stuff here for serious
students of poetry.
Shadow Train – Ian
Seed's monthly online magazine. It's made
a promising start with its first few issues and bids fair to become
an important part of the landscape.
Slope –
long-running webzine and small press. Good design, usually interesting
contents, and this is one American zine that looks across its
national borders.
Stride
Magazine webzine from the
Exeter publishing house Stride (see below). Well worth following.
Tarpaulin
Sky – new online journal from
an interesting US publisher. The website has one of the best designs
I've seen in recent times and navigation is easy. Good work, mostly
from the experimental end of the spectrum, but seemingly without
adherence to any particular school.
Terrible
Work – webzine successor to the Plymouth-based
print publication, but wholly devoted to reviews. It seems
that the editors are doing their best to maintain a welcome-all-comers
approach, while still making it clear what really interests
them. This is one to bookmark / add to favourites (depending
on your browser), as it's one of the few places where you
can find out what's been published by the UK small presses
and, what's more, often get a review of it. The site is worth
visiting frequently since updates seem to occur more or less
as the reviews are ready.
Websites
for Printed Journals
Aesthetica — cultural
journal in the UK, with some material also online.
Chicago
Review is probably the best
literary journal from a US university at the present time.
I'm biased because I've contributed to it and also co-edited
a special issue in 2002, but it's fair to say that anyone
who likes what they see in Shearsman or in the jacket webzine
will like Chicago Review. If the link doesn't work,
paste this in to your browser address field instead: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/
Dark
Horse is a Scottish-American poetry magazine
with a rather more conservative approach than I normally
enjoy, but it's hard to argue with the nose for quality demonstrated
by recent issues. This website has excerpts from current
and past issues which can be downloaded as PDFs. Despite
the Scottish-American axis, work is taken from elsewhere
too.
First
Intensity Fine magazine from
deepest Kansas.
The
Gig is a magazine devoted to
modern UK poetry, as well as US and Canadian work, edited
from Canada by Nate Dorward, which is consistently worth
reading.
Mandorla is
a bilingual English/Spanish magazine now published from the University
of Illinois. It's an invaluable resource in both languages.
Nerter is
a Spanish magazine edited by Manuel Brito, who also produces the
English-language (but mostly with North American content) Zasterle
Press books from La Laguna in the Canary Islands (see below for
Zasterle).
PN
Review Often thought of as
conservative and dull, PNR is in fact well worth reading
in its role as the house organ of the Carcanet Press. Every
issue has something of interest somewhere and most recent
issues have been full of
excellent material.
poetryfoundation.org — Website for the
magazine Poetry (Chicago); new as of early 2006, and full of interesting
material. Well worth tracking on a regular basis.
Poetry
Salzburg Review – Austrian
magazine devoted to (largely) British poetry. Good reviews section,
and an increasingly interesting selection of original material.
This magazine has been growing into one that needs to be read
seriously.
Poetry
Society of Great Britain & Poetry Review The
magazine improved greatly under the editorship of David Herd
and Robert Potts, and under Fiona
Sampson it continues to be good, if on a slightly different
path.
Rain
Taxi is a fine US-based magazine.
Excellent reviews section.
Tinfish —
magazine and small press producing interesting work in Hawaii,
mostly from the USA and the Pacific Rim. Edited by poet Susan
Schultz. A good place to find material that doesn't turn up in
regular magazines in quantity.
Publishers
Anvil
Press Poetry Rather conservative
small-press with a fine record. Authors include Michael Hamburger,
Harry Guest, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Celan, Vasko Popa, Ivan
Lalic, Marius Kociejowski. Excellent translation series.
Their books are superbly produced.
Bad
Press Interesting new press started by Marianne
Morris but also involving Jow Lindsay and Jonathan Stevenson.
There are stylistic and political overlaps with Barque (see
below) but Bad Press seems to be attempting to establish its
own niche as a younger-generation alternative / innovative
press. Worth tracking.
Barque
Press New-ish Cambridge publishing
house devoted to younger authors and the occasional senior
figure such as J H Prynne or John Wilkinson.
Carcanet
Press Manchester-based publisher
of PN Review and a solid list of poetry volumes.
Duration
Press – US site for Duration and
a number of other small presses and journals. Good archive
of downloadable e-books, including the complete run of Jennifer
Moxley & Steve Evans's journal The Impercipient dating
from the early-mid 1990s.
Flarestack
Poetry – site for the Somerset-based
publisher of poetry chapbooks and the magazine Obsessed
with Pipework. Both sides of the enterprise are
worth tracking and show commendable taste. Back issues of the
magazine can be seen at the Poetry Library's Poetry Magazines
site.
hardPressed
Poetry Irish publishing and mail-order
operation, run by Shearsman author Billy Mills.
Kater
Murr David
Miller's publishing venture, with useful links.
National
Poetry Foundation Publishers
of Paideuma and Sagetrieb magazines as well
as the invaluable Man and Poet / Woman and Poet series
of biographical/critical anthologies.
Phylum
Press – remarkable small press
in the US (and currently based in New Haven, CT), run by
Richard Deming and Nancy Kuhl. Their chapbooks are fascinating
collaborations between artists and poets and are given away
free to the deserving. A press worth following.
Poetry
Salzburg – Austrian publisher of
British poetry, including David Miller's Collected Poems,
and the magazine Poetry Salzburg Review.
Qua
Books –
Ambitious new press based in Rhode Island, run by Michael Gizzi
and Craig Watson, and producing on average one book per annum.
Worth checking in every now and again to discover their publishing
plans.
Reality
Street Editions Publisher
of consistently challenging new work, now based in Hastings.
Well worth supporting: the current list and forthcoming publications
show that the press is continiung to grow. Publisher is poet
(& Shearsman author) Ken Edwards.
Salt
Publishing A
fast-expanding press which produces books by poets from
the UK, the USA and Australia, well-known and not-well-enough-known.
The press has a fine site that showcases its astonishingly
ambitious publishing programme, and also has a webstore from
which you can buy their own titles as well as those published
by Shearsman, Stride, and other independent presses.
Stride Formerly
Exeter-based, but now ensconced in Cornwall, Stride is a publisher
of poetry and prose of an innovative persuasion, mainly British and
American. Also publisher of the webzine Stride magazine
(see link & description above).
Tarpaulin
Sky – print publisher
allied to the excellent online mag of the same name. I've not read
the titles, but designs look splendid and the general tone of the
list looks very positive.
Wild
Honey Press Based in Co. Wicklow,
Ireland, not far from Dublin, poet Randolph Healy has produced
a number of fine hand-stitched chapbooks under the Wild Honey
imprint. An excellent place to start for anyone interested
in the Irish late-modernist poets, many of whom (Trevor Joyce,
Billy Mills, Maurice Scully, Catherine Walsh) have also been
published by Shearsman.
Zasterle
Press is edited by Manuel Brito from
La Laguna in the Canary Islands, and is mostly devoted to
North American avant-garde work, in English. The books are
distributed by SPD in the USA.
Authors
Ulrike
Draesner is one of the best contemporary
German poets. Her website provides excerpts from her various
books, photographs, and details of her readings etc. In German
only.
Andrew
Duncan is a frequent contributor
to Shearsman and author of two Shearsman collections.
He is also well-known for his trenchant critical essays.
This website contains a large number of unpublished essays
and reviews which will fascinate or annoy you, depending
upon your point of view or, perhaps, whether you are the
target of one of his criticisms. Sometimes wrong-headed,
always entertaining, this site is well worth a trawl for
those of you with an interest in modern British poetry. There's
even a very amusing essay on modern German poetry which I
would recommend to those of you interested in that field.
Almost guaranteed to offend someone.
Peter
Finch has
long been a fixture on the UK small-press scene, as editor,
poet, performer, bookseller, promoter and Lord knows what
else. This site is very well-designed and entertaining.
Irish writers
in the modernist tradition.
Trevor
Joyce Shearsman Books author this
site contains more of his work, more for you to sample before
buying his splendid Collected Poems, with the first dream
of fire they hunt the cold.
Palabra
virtual – Latin
American anthology online: Antología
de poesía hispanoamericana — this also
includes Spanish writers, so it's not quite what it says
on the tin. It is nonetheless a fascinating and informative
database of work that is very difficult to get hold of by
other means. It's an essential resource: according to the
entry page they have 772 poets and some 5,500 poems on the
site. I could spend hours in it; come to think of it, I already
have.
Mexican poets
of a younger generation than I had previously come across can be
found at El
Cocodrilo Poeta Virtual. Check out the Antología section
for a number of complete books. The music that comes with it is
irritating, but the poetry ranges from the excellent (Claudia Hernández
de Valle-Arizpe, Ernesto Lumbreras, for instance) to the merely
interesting. Nothing worse than that, which suggests that the editorial
hand is good. The site contains the complete texts of a number
of hard-to-find volumes, usually a few years old, but none the
worse for that.
Tom
Raworth's own
site. Lots of entertaining material here, including photos,
artwork, bibliography, corrections for typos in the author's
2004 Collected Poems, itinerary, reading schedules
etc etc.
Peter
Riley's website contains a
lot of useful information on his work as well as biographical data
and selections from his work.
Ron
Silliman's poetry is not really for me
(at least thus far), but his weblog is consistently stimulating.
I try to catch up on it at least once a week.
John
Tranter – editor
of jacket (see above) and one of Australia's finest,
has two sites devoted to his poetry. One is devoted to the early
work, and the other to more
recent work.
Databases
The
AA Independent Press Guide –
A free online guide to literary magazines and publishers compiled
by Dee Rimbaud.
British
Electronic Poetry Centre – still
under development at Southampton University, but progress
is worth monitoring.
Factory
School – The Factory School Digital
Audio Archive contains a large number of digital transcriptions
of live readings. All kinds of gems here that you can stream
to your desktop: Brathwaite, Berrigan, Bronk, Bunting, Creeley,
HD, Dorn, Duncan etc etc etc and a fine 20-odd minute reading
from the year 2000 by Tom Raworth. There's also some really
weird readings by Pound of Mauberley and some of
the Cantos. His reading of Canto 1 in particular
is a travesty, but it's a glimpse of another age and of a
man who probably got his reading style from Yeats. There's
even one of Pound's WW2 radio broadcasts, which you can just
about understand through the static. You'll need Real Player
or RealOne Player to hear these but most modern browsers
have them installed already. Mac OS X users can now download
an OS X-compatible version of RealOne Player, so they're
no longer excluded.
Famous
Poets and Poems.com is an interesting
new venture in the USA which displays the work of a large number
of classic poets, as well as a number of modern figures. The selection
leans towards North America, inevitably, but there is a lot of
good work to be had here. Treat it as a virtual library or as a
huge anthology. Well-designed site and easily navigable. The best
of its kind for English-language poetry that I have yet seen, and
it can only get better as it adds more poets.
Little
Magazines Directory - UK
and Ireland only.
Little
Magazines Project at Nottingham
Trent University.
Lollipop List
of Little magazines and small presses.
The
Page is a guide to current
writing on the web - poetry, poetics, etc. Useful portal.
Poetry
Library of Great Britain — Online magazine database.
This went online in 2003 and includes the early series
of Shearsman (1981-2), as well as the first 10 issues
of the current series. Apart from Shearsman, the
magazines featured are: Ambit; Blithe Spirit; Borderlines;
Brando's hat; Dream Catcher; Fabric; Fire; Magma; Oasis;
Obsessed with pipework; Orbis; Painted, spoken; Poetry Nation,
Smiths Knoll, The Coffee House, The Frogmore Papers, The
Interpreter's House, The London Magazine, The North and Thumbscrew.
Other magazines are added from time to time. There's a lot
of good material in there, and it's particularly good to
see magazines included which have never had a web presence,
such as Oasis and Fire.
The
Poetry Kit – List of mags and publishers.
Spencer
Selby's list. An invaluable list of magazines
worldwide that are committed to innovative and challenging
poetry. An excellent place to start if you're exploring this
complicated little universe.
Buying
Books
There
is now a page devoted to this subject here.
|