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We added 16 new poetry magazines to our shelves this June. Here are a few highlights:
Sadly issue 10 of The Projectionist’s Playground will be the last in its current run as a quarterly zine. But worry not because this powerful little zine will continue as an annual publication specialising in experimental poetry and visual art. Editor Julius Smit was inspired to launch the zine following a week-long residential course in Experimental Poetry at the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre in West Yorkshire. The first issue arrived in 2017 and all ten issues have wholeheartedly explored its editor’s fascination with “the relationship of text and image and the ideas which can bounce off from them when juxtaposed in a certain sequence.” Issue 11, the first of the new annual publications, is due in June 2020. We hope this is the first of many issues of the new series.
The Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Agenda is dedicated to the theme of ekphrasis. All of the poems within its pages are vivid descriptions, interpretations, or conversations with a work of art. Sources of inspiration include Van Gogh’s ‘Poppies and Butterflies’ and the nightmarish sculptures of Laurence Edwards. The blurring of lines between these numerous art forms results in an extremely evocative issue of the magazine. There are also interviews with poets analysing their relationships with ekphrasis - Frieda Hughes highlights the development in her relationships with both painting and poetry and Pascale Petit discusses the impact that sculpture has had on her poetry.
In its Spring 2019 issue, Poetry Wales - as always - offers readers a broad range of forward-thinking material. New poems from Maria Jastrzębska and John McCullough are highlights here, as well as a wealth of thought-provoking features: Dai George problematizes the notion of whiteness through the lens of his love for Jamaican music; So Mayer explores themes of gender, sexuality, identity and decolonial poetics in the work of First Nations 2SQ poets; and Sarah Hudis takes a poetic journey along the hybridity and liminality of the Wales Coast Path. On top of all this are reviews of work by Nat Raha, four new Parthian publications, and a variety of anthologies, including a volume of Welsh innovative poetry and Boiler House Press’s recent Wretched Strangers.