Poetry London, insisted last year’s Forward prize winner, Michael Symmons Roberts, “is in my view the finest poetry magazine in Britain”.

The magazine was launching its latest issue, number 79, and unveiling its competition winners, judged by Symmons Roberts, in the Mappin Pavilion at London zoo, which looks out at the Australian Outback enclosure, where the odd wallaby could be seen lurking in Friday’s gathering dusk. Emus are also understood to be found there.

Why the zoo? Well, one reason is that Poetry London’s editor, Ahren Warner, is also ZSL London zoo’s writer in residence. Another is that the event was the first in a weekend of top poetry events at Regent’s Park, part of a new arts and cultural programme at the zoo.

Symmons Roberts described the final seven poems, six of which were read out on Friday night, as “accomplished, ambitious and surprising”.  He added in his judge’s comments: “Of course there must be an engagement or negotiation with form, an awareness of where and why to break a line, an ear for the music. But beyond that it gets hard to pin down.”

Symmons Roberts was one of Friday night’s three guest readers. Another was Sean O’Brien, pictured, whose new collection, The Beautiful Librarians, is coming out next year from Picador. He explained that he got started with poetry at the age of 14 in the summer of 1967, when he discovered the extensive collection of poetry that Hull central library possessed. He went there two or three times a week: “The staff of the central library were all extremely beautiful, and that added to the attraction of going there.” His poem was dedicated to those “ice queens in the realms of gold”, still remembered “long after they were gone, and all the brilliant stock was sold”. 

O’Brien read another poem called ‘The Seer’. He said he didn’t think he needed to name the subject, “who tried to take possession of the first world war for the Conservative party earlier this year”. The poem talks of privatising the Somme and Passchendaele, and of setting “the idle dead to work … the grave will cease to be a gravy train”.   

His poems were entertaining, and often hilarious. He introduced one about hearing loss in middle age by saying that after getting an aid from the NHS, “I got to hear everything, including things that were not actually taking place. I began to pick up Radio Luxembourg, even though it ceased broadcasting years ago.” The poem talks of “the soundtrack of creation in an unrecorded vowel” … and of balancing out “the love-cry and the howl”.  

Another poem was dedicated to the poet Alan Brownjohn, a fellow tutor on a recent residential course. The poem talks of being put “in the Edward Thomas room, with the tiny window blocked by leaves”; of the ”slurry served at dinner” which “seems to have a fringe on top”; and of course students such as “Norman Shouting … and someone who is always not there yet, but on a train”.

The third guest reader was Laura Elliott, whose poems in the current issue of Poetry London are ‘the rule of increasing concreteness’, and ‘anonymity will go mainstream’. Competition winners who read were Jon Stone, first with ‘Nightjar’; Beverley Nadin, second with ‘6am’; and Stephen Sexton, third with ‘Elegy for Olive Oyl’. Highly commended, and who also read, were Geraldine Clarkson, Bethany W Pope, Paul Stephenson. Tim Turnbull was also highly commended.

On the night Poetry London’s reviews editor, Tim Dooley, reminded the audience of another magazine event coming up, a celebration of 25 years of the best of Poetry London, at Kings Place  in  London on Monday 1 December. The book, edited by Dooley and Martha Kapos, is published by Carcanet.

Poetry London not only carries poetry and extensive reviews, but competition and event listings, too. But Dooley emphasised that any magazine needs subscribers, no matter how high its reputation: “We depend on private subscriptions for our health, and even our future survival.”

Greg Freeman

 

PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE OUT LOUD 

 

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