Shearsman magazine was founded in 1981 and ran for two years before being folded into the London-based magazine Ninth Decade (later Tenth Decade), together with Oasis and Atlantic Review. The second series of Shearsman began in 1991, in a smaller format, and ran roughly quarterly until early 2005, when the format changed again to a half-yearly paperback book—the current issue is shown on the left of your screen. Further details of this history can be found by clicking on Editor in the navigation bar (above right). Issues 50-66 are also available on this site as PDF downloads, and are replicas of the print version of the magazine. Starting with issue 63/64, only about 50% of the contents of each issue (now much larger—average size, 108 pages) was made available online, usually within 3-4 months of print publication. Issues appear in April and October of each year.

The Poetry Library of Great Britain—based in London's Royal Festival Hall—now has a website featuring selected British magazines; their selection includes digitised versions of the six journal issues of Shearsman's first series, as well as the first ten issues from the current series. Click on the link in the navigation bar to go to the site's contents page and then click on the Shearsman link.

The magazine no longer carries reviews, which have now instead gained their own independent part of this site. The Recommendations section of this site—in some ways, an extension of the reviews area—includes famous old books, unknown new books, unjustly neglected books and generally all those poetry volumes that I think should be read by right-thinking readers. This is a never-ending process and the recommendations will continue to be revised as further titles occur to me, or as my opinions change. I make no apology for the rampant subjectivity of these lists; the pages carry a large number of book cover images and may take a few moments to download over a slow connection.