For those of you with long memories, or some sense of history, the name of this magazine will come as a surprise. I can't help wondering if the echo was fortuitous or a deliberate nod in the direction of a certain US little magazine from the 1950s. I recall reading the one from Black Mountain College when I was a student, and very fine it was too, even if already 15 years old at the time. This one – where the title refers to a topographical fact in Northern Ireland, rather than a college in the Carolinas – is nicely-produced, no doubt thanks to the financial support received from two Northern Irish funding bodies, and the content is accomplished throughout, but not particularly exciting or groundbreaking. It might best be regarded as a journal showing what the younger Ulster mainstream feels is important, though not all contributors are Irish. Some of the work here is sloppy but even then has something to commend it. Not really for me, but the mainstream faithful out there may well feel differently, particularly as the quality control here seems better than in the majority of such magazines.

The Dark Horse 15, Summer 2003 (ISSN 1357-6720, ed. Gerry Cambridge, c/o 3(b) Blantyre Mill Road, Bothwell, South Lanarkshire G71 8DD, Scotland; Jennifer Goodrich, 70 Lincoln Avenue, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706, USA. 96pp, pb, £3 / $5. Appears bi-annually. Subscriptions (3 issues) £11 / $18, cheques payable to 'Dark Horse Writers'; European subscriptions ex-UK £13). Subtitled 'The Scottish-American Poetry Magazine', The Dark Horse is a magazine I'd never come across until July 2003, and it's been a pleasant surprise. It has a serious look about it, smart and sober production values, and is almost absurdly cheap, thanks — I presume — to the funding it gets from the Scottish Arts Council.

Like P N Review and some other serious British journals, it errs on the side of conservatism for my usual taste, but I still find its contents instructive, particularly as the Scottish literary scene often seems impenetrable from further south. It's also open to writers from outside the US-Scotland axis, which might seem a little confusing, but which leavens the mix. Poems here from Scots Douglas Dunn, Edwin Morgan, Gael Turnbull among others; essays by Seamus Heaney on MacDiairmid, Philip Hobsbaum on the late Peter Redgrove, Angus Calder on the Russian poet Boris Slutsky; well-written reviews by Kathleen MacDermott (of 3 US poets) and John Lucas (of an anthology of contemporary Scottish poets); an interview with Philip Hoy, who runs the Waywiser Press and the Between The Lines series of interview books. Plus six fine poems by Peter Redgrove. There's also an irritating essay by James Aitchison on 'Obscurity in Poetry', where it is propounded that the reason no-one reads poetry nowadays is that those pesky modernists had nothing but contempt for the reader. As usual, this trope is constructed from a totalitarian, reductive position every bit as unhelpful as the lofty pronouncements of some of the grand modernists themselves. This way lies Socialist Realism.

The Dark Horse is a dark horse, on the evidence of this one issue, and one worth a flutter. It also has a good website now, with samples of current and past work featured in PDF format.

The first regular issue since the huge Tom Raworth special, The Gig 15 has fascinating poetry from Catherine Wagner and also the Galician writer Chus Pato (translated by Erin Mouré) as well as a valuable lecture / essay on reading poetry by John Hall. Lise Downe and Ian Hunt were new names to me and well worth the acquaintance, but I was less taken with Marjorie Welish's outing here. Good reviews of John Temple and John Wilkinson, the latter a model of controlled compression and delivery. I'm envious as I've been struggling with the same book, trying to find something sensible to say about it.

This used to be 'The Journal of Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry' but it changed name, I believe, because of the lack of sufficient good translations from the Scandinavian languages. There's one Norwegian poet here, though, Halldis Moren Vesaas (related to Tarjei Vesaas, I wonder?), and printed both in the original and in translation, en face. There are some other translations, but the magazine concentrates mainly on original work in English, sourced from a range of writers, British and overseas. The quality is better than I usually find in British little-mags, and that goes for the book reviews too, where the reviewers engage seriously with the work at hand. Worth keeping an eye on.

Modern Poetry in Translation 21, "Looking Eastward" (ed. Daniel Weissbort, c/o MPT, The School of Humanities, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS. Subscriptions: £22 for 2 issues in the UK / EU, £26/$40 elsewhere. ISBN 0-9533824-9-4, 288pp. Single copies £12?) A welcome return to form after the poor out-of-sequence Iraqi issue. 'East' here is Eastern Europe, a focus of MPT in its early issues back in the 1960s, as well as Kipling's version of East, India and China. There are also several other poems from elsewhere, as usual and therefore, this issue is like the usual ragbag rather than a genuinely themed issue. I've actually nothing against this, as the sense of discovery is paramount in these kinds of issues: all kinds of little gems come up out of the woodwork – in this issue it's the Hungarian poems and the interesting, if not necessarily successful, unpublished translations by the late Ted Hughes.

MPT is worth getting if you've any interest in the notion of poetry in translation. Sometimes it works really well, and this issue has a fair number of successful versions, if one can judge by the results in English alone.

Oasis 109 (ed. Ian Robinson, 12 Stevenage Road, London SW6 6ES. 32pp, centre-stapled. ISSN 0029-7410. Subscriptions £6 for 4 issues, £12 for 8. Single copies £2.50 / $5. Overseas subscriptions £22 / $30. Dollar cheques in f/o Robert Vas Dias.) Another good issue of Oasis, with poems by Peter Larkin, Estill Pollock and Yorgos Chronas (trans. Yannis Goumas), prose by Anthony Rudolf and Andy Brown, and a poetic satire by Adrian Clarke. Illustrations by the editor and Ray Seaford.The highlights are Larkin, Rudolf and Chronas.

Welcome back, PQR, we've missed you. This is a brave attempt to do in print what Terrible Work has begun more recently to do online – review a large number of contemporary poetry publications, most of them from the small presses. The featured poet this time is John Hall, represented by an insert of some work that can be found on this website. Illness on the part of one of the editors has meant a considerable delay in this issue appearing, so no. 20 is a catch-up issue. Hopefully it will appear with its former regularity again w.e.f. no. 21. Meanwhile, this one is recommended, as is a subscription at what is a generous price.

Poetry Review Vol. 93 No. 2, Summer 2003 (22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX. ISBN 1-90077-135-7, 112pp, pb, £7.95 (plus £1.05 p&p). Subscriptions: UK £30, Overseas airmail £40, USA $56.) Another good issue under the new editorial team. As has been the case in recent issues, the poetry is a mixed bag, but never bad. There are excellent contributions from Carrie Etter, John Kinsella and John Wilkinson (in the latter case, the best poems I've seen by him for a long time); good imitations/versions of Supervielle by Moniza Alvi, for whom I've always had a sneaking regard, and a fine poem by Radnóti (trans. Gömöri & Wilmer). Then there's an excellent essay by Wilkinson on Douglas Oliver, and good reviews of Logue, Mulford, Sinclair, Hamburger, Carson and others.

As with all recent issues, there's also an art feature, with particularly good work from Billy Childish, and a review by Matthew Welton of the recent Abstraction exhibition at the Tate Liverpool. There is too the now-regular review by Andrew Duncan, this time of Jeremy Hooker (whose book he doesn't like) and Robert Crawford (where the opposite holds true, to my surprise). He almost – not quite – manages to make me want to read the Crawford volume, something I thought nobody could achieve. PR is becoming again what it should be: a journal of record, which you want to see and where most poets would want to be seen. Can't say fairer than that; I suggest you subscribe.

Copyright © Shearsman Books Ltd, 2003.