Magazines I've Been In (cover version) and other stories

 I saw recently a fellow/rival/other 'poetry blogger' list all the magazines he's been in. It was Tim Love at  litrefs that I see via Clarissa's ever useful index at The Stone and the Star. 

What could be more self-indulgent, I thought, as well as much less impressive, than do my own - from memory but it will be almost complete. It is of no interest whatsoever unless you were around on the 'littlepress' scene of the late 70's from where many of these long defunct magazines come. It's possible that even their editors can barely remember them by now.

Poems - Navis, Sepia, Sandwiches, South, The Chair, The Incurable, Poetry Nottingham, Calliope, About Larkin, Period Piece and Paperback, Joe Soap's Canoe

I thought there were a few more than that. One or two of them took some remembering. Navis seemed like some sort of coup because they had recently published a couple of Thom Gunn poems. On the back they listed poets in the current issue in block capitals and some from previous issues below in smaller type so I was given more prominent billing than him ( !!! ). That is some sort of prized possession.

Reviews - PN Review, Sepia, The Reader, Allusions.

I've always thought it was some sort of editorial accident or oversight that a review by me got into PN Review but if anybody knows what they're doing, surely Michael Schmidt does. I think it was an act of kindness.

Fiction - Fisheye

 

The point is really that by now I don't see the point when I can show the world anything I feel like here almost before the ink's dry should I feel the need rather than wait months to find out if I'm in and then a few more to see it in print. Long gone is the thrill I heard Simon Armitage describe not so long back when he saw his first published poem in days before the term 'hard copy' would have been used to describe it.

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But, on something of a photographic day, I can add a further picture to illustrate a poem, which is The Trees by Philip Larkin, in which they come back to life 'like something almost being said'. Not always associated with quite such optimism, he was writing of them 'coming into leaf' but blossom makes a prettier picture, or two.

And I also like to keep a record of the long hair I'm enjoying having in the circumstances and so I asked Yoko if she could take a picture today. The Grateful Dead have asked me to join them. But maybe it's about time we updated the 'masthead' portrait with this by Cosham's answer to Annie Liebowicz.