You are here

November Magazines Round-Up

With 23 new issues added to our shelves in November, here are a few hightlights: 

Image Credit: 

Long Poem Magazine recently celebrated its 10th birthday with issue 20 so it seems appropriate to highlight the unique beauty of this issue. Every month the magazine publishes a host of complex and emotive long poems (of over 75 lines) covering all kinds of subject matter. The sources of inspiration for some of the poems included in this month’s issue include novels, biblical stories and art. Perhaps the most unique feature of this magazine lies in the way it reveals the writing process of its contributors. The explanatory paragraphs provided by each poet this month discuss how many drafts it has taken to get the poem to this point and can often surprisingly be beautifully crafted utilising only unfinished prose.

Image Credit: 

With its themed issues and guest editors Magma is always evolving and issue 72 is particularly pertinent in being devoted to climate change. The editors posed the question, how can poets adequately respond to something to which society is currently responding to so inadequately? Inviting eight poets, Polly Atkin, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, John Kinsella, Kathryn Maris, Momtaza Mehri, Daljit Nagra, Jos Smith and Claudine Toutoungi (some associated with environmental issues but some perhaps not), to collaborate with scientists and conservationists from the Cambridge Conservative Initiative is definitely an informed response. Equally inspiring is that the editors wanted to investigate if economically it was possible to print the magazine on recycled paper and card - there is something rather wonderful about knowing that the cover includes recycled coffee cups.

Banipal, which has been published in London since 1998, is a magazine of modern Arabic literature. The current issue 63 is an absolute treasure trove and includes a celebration of Egyptian poet and artist Ahmed Morsi, an essay on Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, new work by Girgis Shukry (also Egyptian), a list of the 100 best Arabic novels, and many reviews of new and newly translated poetry and prose. The magazine takes its name from Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king who assembled the first systematically organised library in the ancient Middle East.

Click here to see a full list of the magazines that we received in November. Use the Sort function to list alphabetically by magazine title. View the complete catalogue record of a magazine to see a PDF of the contents and a full list of the poets published.