An essay worth reading

There’s a very good essay by Paul Lake in the Winter Anthology. It is about ‘The Shape of Poetry’ at http://winteranthology.com/index.php?author=paul-lake&title=shape

Poetry magazines

Abegail Morley provides a useful and varied list of British poetry magazines at http://abegailmorley.wordpress.com/anthologies-and-magazine/.

January at last

It’s a few days late, but the January issue is now online. I’d hoped to get it together before I went away for the New Year, but a family crisis intervened. These things happen.
It’s a small and select issue, but a good one, I think.
Next month, of course, will be Jessy Randall’s Found Poetry special issue (for which the deadline has now passed). It promises to be a very entertaining read.
Meanwhile, Snakeskin’s head office (editor@snakeskin.org.uk) will be delighted to receive contributions for the March issue.

January may be late…

The January issue will probably come online a little late. Busy times and small crises here in the Snakeskin publishing complex mean that there will be a delay. I hope to get it out by about the 4th or 5th of the month.

A Cruel Winter

This has been a vicious winter, taking away too many people whom I admired.

Peter Reading: truculent, challenging poet.

Christopher Logue: who remined us that the Iliad was alive.

Gilbert Adair: Freewheeling polymath, and the only man who could have translated La Disparition so brilliantly.

And now Christopher Hitchens, who loved a fight, and chose God as the biggest and baddest opponent available. I saw him in the flesh only once, at a conference about Kipling, who was one of his heroes. (Hitchens was good at choosing heroes). He gave a talk on Kipling and America that was good, but what I remember most happily was the delay. Some distinguished guests had not turned up, and we had to wait a few minutes before they arrived. Hitchens happily filled the time. “Let’s have some limericks!” he siad, and recited some corkers, especially Robert Conquest’s version of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man:

Seven ages. First puking and muling,

Then very pissed off with your schooling,

Then fucks and then fights,

Then judging chaps’ rights.

Then sitting in slippers. Then drooling.

Terrific.

Update 18th December: And now Vaclav Havel…

December Snakeskin

We’re online a day early, because I’m going away for a few days.

The main feature, of course, is Duncan Gillies MacLaurin’s collection of sonnets, but sixteen other poets are represented as well.

Enjoy!

Singing the Sonnet

I’m currently putting the last editorial touches to the star turn in December Snakesin. It’s I Sing the Sonnet, the latest in our irregular series of e-chapbooks. The poet is Duncan Gillies MacLaurin, and it’s twenty pages of fourteen-liners, the fruit of twenty-five years experimenting with the form.

All of Duncan’s poems follow the traditional sonnet rhyming patterns, but in some of the poems (and they are among the ones I like best) he has moved away from the iambic pentameter used by most sonneteers in English, to see how the form works with four beat lines, or seven beats.

And why not? Shakespeare included a tetrameter sonnet in his collection. Here is one of Duncan’s:
Mama’s Little Boy

A tearaway with golden curls,
he’ll always be a darling boy,
your little pet, your pride and joy,
the odd one out among the girls.

You worshipped that precocious child
who trusted you and shied from crowds,
the silver lining in the clouds,
a highland burn, remote and wild.

You’d cut him out to be a star,
a maestro on the violin,
a new Yehudi Menuhin.

You never dreamed he’d play guitar;
and now see nothing to commend
this bully charging round the bend.

For someone special…

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November

The clocks have gone back and there’s a chill in the air – but never mind, because there’s a new Snakeskin just bursting with the good stuff.
I can’t remember when we last had so eclectic an issue.
Submission quality has been very high recently. I have packed in as many poems as I reasonably can, but have had to let some go that would definitely have sneaked into some previous issues. Never mind. Keep them coming.

Incognizant Slithering

Here at Snakeskin we’re very fond of snake poems, and we published a good one last year – Incognizant Slithering by American poet Catherine Zickgraf.
Catherine has alerted me to the fact that a video of her performing the poem is now on YouTube. She’s at the Art Bar, Columbia, South Carolina, and it’s a remarkably sinuous and expressive performance. Take a look.