So many! So short! So good

The editorial inbox for November Snakeskin has been the fullest in the magazine’s history. There was a cornucopia of short verse to choose from.

This made the task of editing the hardest it’s ever been. From the hundreds of poems submitted, there were a very large number with merit, a solid phalanx of the worthy. How to choose?

I had started with the idea that I would present an issue with just twenty poems. That idea went by the board. A lot more squeezed in, and there are still poems that I regret not using.

Were the poems I chose ‘the best’? That’s always a bit subjective. They were the ones that struck a chord with me. Many because of what they were saying, some because of their use of words or their use of form. Some because they were funny.

Many thanks to everyone who sent us poems. I’ll try to write a note to all who offered poems, but it’s going to take a while.

Meanwhile – enjoy the issue.

(By the way, the next two Snakeskins will be standard issues. Any length, any subject, any style. Send your poems to the usual address.)

Short poems for November

November Snakeskin will be a Short Poems special issue. Any subject, any style – but nothing over nine lines.

Send your minuscule efforts to editor@snakeskin.org.uk

January Snakeskin

A happy and prosperous New Year to all our readers!

January Snakeskin will come online on January 3rd.

On the subject of Libraries…

The special November Snakeskin on the theme of Libraries and Bookshops has been a pleasure to edit. A nice variety of approaches, and plenty of warm feeling for these vital but threatened institutions of our culture. the zine should be going online late this evening.

UK readers who are concerned about the erosion of library services might like to consider signing this petition asking the government to ring-fence library spending. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/228742https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/228742https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/228742

WORK

A reminder – May Snakeskin will be a special issue on the subject of Work.
Please send us poems (in a style of your choice) about jobs (your own or someone else’s.
We’d like to hear about hard work and soft jobs, about rewarding labour, about easy skives and about work of mind-numbing tedium.
We hope to include as many different types of work as we can, so please send your version to editor@snakeskin.org.uk within the next couple of weeks.

Snakeskin 250

Our 250th edition is now online!

I remember how excited I got when we reached our fiftieth edition, our hundredth, our two hundredth… At 250 I’ve grown, not exactly blasé – more accepting that this is the thing I do, and those issue numbers are going to keep on rising until I’m halted in my tracks by death, dementia or debility. Which I hope will be not too soon.

The 250th issue is one I’m especially pleased with – good poems, and varied as anything.

But another Snakeskin tradition is technical problems. This morning my email is playing up. I can’t send messages to the poets whose work has been selected. With luck I’ll be able to fix this soon. In the meantime – apologies.

Update: Email is now working again, the return to smooth operation as unexplained as the original malfunction. these are deep mysteries.

November Snakeskin

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.