Editor: George Simmers
Thanks to Jessy Randall for guest-editing the February issue of Snakeskin, on the theme of Maths and Numbers.
It’s meant that I’ve had a nice easy January, with nothing much to do, except set up the poems she chose, decorated by images from an ancient Maths book.
Life will get busy again now, with a general edition coming up in March and a new special issue in April…
It’s online, but in a bit of a rush, because I’m off to a big (and I mean big) New Year’s lunch.
No time to notify poets properly at the moment – will do so later.
Happy New Year to all!
Well, it’s been something of a rush, because I’ve been away on holiday, and have had to do most of the magazine-assembling today – but the December issue is now online.
And a very good issue it is, too.
November Snakeskin is now online.
As the editor I know I’m biased, but I reckon it’s a very good and very varied issue.
Last month in the Politics issue I asked for seriousness rather than satire. This month, to balance that, we’ve got a thoroughly scurrilous and ribald set of poems by Brian Allgar, tracing the career and crimes of a fairly vile politician.
Among the bustle of other excellent poets, please take a look at the work of Annie Fisher, whose pamphlet Infinite in All Perfections is published today by Happenstance.
I’m also very glad to have a new (translated) contribution by K.M. Payne, who was a key presence in the early days of Snakeskin. He did a Rimbaud and gave up poetry for quite a few years, but now seems to be drifting back, which is excellent news. He is, of course, my co-author of the huge and absurd poetical hypertext project The Maze of Mirrors.
My own contribution this month is a bad-tempered snarl at those who campaign for academic safe places, where they will hear no opinions that contradict their own. Snakeskin believes that universities, like poems, should be intellectually unsafe spaces, where the assumption should be that assumptions are there to be challenged.
Once again Jessy Randall will guest-edit the February 2017 issue of Snakeskin. (You can find out more about Jessy at:http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/ )
This year the theme will be NUMBERS / MATHEMATICS. As always, the theme is open to interpretation.
Send up to five poems to jessyrandall@yahoo.com. No attachments, please, except in the case of visual poems (please send jpegs). Simultaneous submissions are fine. The deadline is December 1. Expect a response by December 15.
The proper kind of poetry
has resonance – it’s heavy.Her verse is light, the critics said
she writes it on the bevvy.
This is part of Helena Nelson’s ‘Self-portrait as an Unsuitable Poem’, in her new collection Down With Poetry, which the postman brought to my door the other day, to my huge delight.
The book brings together her previous ‘unsuitable’ collections, and adds more to them. The term ‘unsuitable’ is inspired by a magazine’s rejection note many years ago: ‘Many thanks for the poems. These aren’t quite suitable…’ Helena has a keen ear for the intricacies of language, and realised that the editor wasn’t saying the poems were no good – just that they were ‘unsuitable’ – they didn’t fit the standard category of poems that get published. Maybe because they don’t make a show of taking themselves too seriously.
Helena’s ‘Unsuitables’ are sometimes rude about poetry and poets: Read the rest of this entry »
I’m currently putting the final touches to October Snakeskin – the politics edition. It will probably go online late on the first or early on the second of October.
When I set the politics challenge a couple of months ago, the EU referendum had just produced a result that showed Britain divided, after a campaign that a fractious and divided nation, whose tribes were hardly able to communicate with one another, and often showed little respect for one another. In America the bullying demotic of Mr. Trump seemed to be overtaking civil discourse. Worse than that, it was producing its mirror-image in the rhetoric of his opponents, whose anger at his success was increasingly expressed in language marked with bitterness, stereotyping and an unattractive intellectual snobbishness. Read the rest of this entry »
All over the news this week (or at least in the spaces left free by horrors) is Pokemon Go, the new interactive game for phones.
Things go, things return. Just a couple of weeks ago I was looking through back numbers of Snakeskin, and thinking that one of my favourite numbers, our Pokemon special in June 2000, would never again be topical, and might be incomprehensible to younger readers.
I had not realised that the world of Pokemon, after its wild craze at the turn of the century as a trading card game, had persisted, at a lower level of fame, in computer games and elsewhere. Now it’s back in the big-time, apparently, so let me remind you about our poetic tribute to it.
This began when K.M.Payne’s son, Spencer, became very interested in the strange creatures of the Pokemon world. Ken wrote some rather brilliant poems for him, and sent them to me at Snakeskin. As a teacher of young teenagers, I had also come across the card game and rather liked it, so I joined in with some parodies, showing how a few major poets might have responded to Pokemon. And Phil Barker sent us a nice poem about Avem Frigidum.
The issue is Snakeskin 55, and can be found here:
http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/snake55.htm
This is one of the issues now properly restored in the Snakeskin archive. I’ve worked my way through quite a few of the issues now, but there is still plenty more to do. It’s enjoyable work, though. I’m amazed by the range and quality of the work we have published over the years.
For several years Snakeskin has nestled fairly happily on the web servers of Virgin media. The webspace came with a package of telephone, broadband and cable television, and has suited me fairly well.
Recently, though, Virgin sent a message saying that they will no longer offer webspace. Didn’t make them enough money, I suppose. They offered to transfer me to a ridiculously pricey package with another firm, but I have found a better deal, and got us a new domain name. The Snakeskin files can now be found at www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk .
You can still type in the old http://www.snakeskin.org.uk and you will be redirected to the new site without problems. If you have links or bookmarks pointing to http://www.simmers1.webspace.virginmedia.com however, these will become outdated soon – so please update them.
The new site is working pretty well, but one or two things need adjusting. And I definitely need to sort out the archive page, plus one or two others that have fallen into disrepair.
Please do let me know if you have any problems with the new site.
The March issue is on its way.
As well as the usual array of poems, this contains the first of our new (and probably irregular) series of e-chapbooks. Reading for Rush Hour is a downloadable .pdf file of poems by Thomas Land.
Thomas is a regular contributor to Snakeskin, of course, and we are proud to have published many of his translations from the Hungarian, mostly of poets whose lives were affected by the Holocaust. This chapbook is a selection of his original poems, and gives an engaging picture of his poetic character and concerns.
We have a couple of other possible chapbooks lines up, but suggestions for future publications will be welcomed by the editor.
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