HORIZON REVIEW 4 IS LIVE

Go here to read the wonderful Horizon Review. There is poetry, essays, interviews and my fiction selections for this issue are those listed below. Hope you enjoy reading them:

• Elizabeth Baines
  
  • What Do You Do If
• Neil Campbell
  
  • Cars and Rocks
• Srinjay Chakravarti
  
  • The Court Jester (from Tagore)
• Tania Hershman
  
  • Two Short Stories
• Rita Jacob
  
  • The Day Samuel Died
• Julie Owen Moylan
  
  • Alice - A Life in Parts

POETIC JUSTICE - NEW FORUM FOR POETS

Poets Jane Holland and Annie Finch have founded a new forum which is "dedicated to providing a platform for those who wish to discuss or read about gender-discrimination issues, networking and engaging with such debates in a friendly and non-partisan way."

From the site: "In the West, feminist attitudes in literature, and especially poetry, are currently regarded as unnecessary and even counterproductive, when the opposite is too often true. We have won some battles, that's not in dispute, but after thousands of years of domination by a patriarchal system, it would be naive to believe that a few decades of feminist thinking could eradicate the problem forever. We are still by no means assured of equality and a lack of discrimination on grounds of gender, and sites such as this exist for that very reason."

If this sounds interesting to you, you can join the site here.

HORIZON REVIEW & OTHER LIT MAGS

Pic by Rickard Gillberg

There was a bit of debate in the comments section here last week about the merits and de-merits of mags - specifically Southword - going online and scrapping their print operations.

Proof, if it were needed, that online zines can be excellent is the current Horizon Review - Issue 2, which is a generous mix of fiction, poetry, interviews, reviews and much, much more. Edited by trojan poet Jane Holland, there is a brilliant and hefty interview with poet Kate Clanchy by Vicki Bertram. It's long, so you may want to print it out, as I did, and savour it with a cuppa in your comfy chair. I went and bought one of Kate's books after reading it, I was so taken with her. She seems to have similar poetic concerns to my own - women, sex, feminism, motherhood.

In other lit mag news, I received my contributor's copy of The French Literary Review today. I have a story in there 'Mademoiselle O'Murphy' which will appear in Nude, my forthcoming collection with Salt. This twice-yearly Review is for writing with a French connection and they are seeking subs of poetry and fiction (1000 - 3000 words). Subs guides here at the editor, Barbara Dordi's, blog. I'm looking forward to curling up with the mag later on today.

Tattoo-Tatú featured on Raw Light

The title poem from my last collection Tattoo-Tatú is featured on Jane Holland's Raw Light blog for her Short Season of Other Poets here.

Jane Holland is a poet, novelist and editor of the online arts magazine, Horizon Review. She is also a newly appointed commissioning editor at Salt.

HORIZON REVIEW NOW LIVE!

The inaugural Horizon Review, a new lit mag from Salt publishing in Cambridge, edited by Warwick Poet Laureate Jane Holland, is now available for you to read here.

There is lots of poetry; 5 short stories - including new ones by both Elizabeth Baines and me; an article on how to get an agent; reviews; an interview with China Miéville and lots more. It's action packed, it's new; get over there and support them / submit to them / enjoy!

JANE HOLLAND ON MAKING A POEM

Go to Jane Holland's Raw Light blog for an insight into her creative process, writer's block, and the safe birth of her poem 'Fifth'.

A quote from her post:
'You have to remember that I hadn’t written a poem for over three years when ‘Fifth’ suddenly came to me, out of the blue. In such reduced circumstances any poem is miraculous. So I was reluctant to mess too much with those early drafts, however pedestrian, in case I jinxed my return to poetry.'


It was Jane who wisely advised in another post that 'first drafts are not holy relics':
'They will still exist, perfectly intact, after you have rewritten the poem twenty-five times. So release your grip on the poem; let it move in whichever direction it chooses. If the redrafting process unnerves you, keep the first draft at your elbow and use it as an anchor; however ‘out there’ subsequent drafts become, your original impetus can remain steady.'