Long Poem Magazine

Issue 20, our 10th Anniversary issue, was launched at the Barbican Library on Monday 29th October, to great acclaim. Here’s what Simon Jenner has to say about Long Poem Magazine: 

Thank you Linda and Claire for such a warm reception and dazzling varieties of poetry in Issue 20. So many of us poets, readers mostly of course both are hugely indebted as is the poetry world. Even if it doesn’t know it yet. It’s a repository and manifesto. It champions a struggling genre, shifts that genre’s parameters with such a catholic range; changes minds everywhere; and curates to propel new work. It’s also beautifully presented. It’ s one of the very few essential poetry periodicals. Thank you! ‘

As well as Simon, Issue 20 includes poets Mimi Khalvati, Penelope Shuttle, Mark Waldron, Martin Stannard, and Bertolt Brecht translated by Timothy Adès, plus many more inspiring poets and an essay on the poetry of place by Angela France.

Claire Crowther writes in the Editorial: ‘Long Poem Magazine is ambitious for contemporary poetry; we reach across continents to find the many ways of extending a poem, and we present a variety of stylistic approaches. Balladeer, modernist, surrealist, confessional or whatever poet you identify as – your work will be included here if it takes skilful advantage of the glorious opportunities of a long poem. What are those? Mimi Khalvati, quoted in the editorial for Issue One, says a long poem is: ‘as much a space to flex one’s muscles, grapple with problems, identify weaknesses, as it is to mine rich seams, give way to obsessions and vent to narrative.’ Fitting for a magazine not afraid of length, depth or breadth, we give big-field page size to present our poems. The magazine has doubled in page number since its early days. Every issue is an anthology of the best contemporary long poetry.’

Long Poem Magazine is entirely self funded, and without you support it would not survive. If you have not yet done so, you can purchase Issue 20, or take out an Annual Subscription, or even a Supporters Subscription here: http://longpoemmagazine.org.uk/shop/

Editors Linda Black & Claire Crowther

“LPM is invaluable in that it offers a unique home to poets who write at greater length but, more importantly, in that it publishes inspiring work of such high quality. What would poets do without it?”

– Mimi Khalvati