Magma Poetry


Magma Poetry, better known as Magma, is a London-based poetry magazine, publishing work on and about poetry, and known for appointing a different editor every issue. It was founded by Helen Nicholson and Laurie Smith in 1994, with its first issue edited by Smith, and appearing in March 1994. Since 1994, a total of 91 issues of Magma have appeared by December 2024. The team run the Magma Poetry, Pamphlet and Subscribers-only competitions.

Early days

Conceived sometime in "the summer of 1992" with 'Urban Fox' as one of the proposed names, Magma was founded by Nicholson and Smith in 1994. It is published three times a year, usually in spring, summer and autumn. The original team also included Mick Delap, David Boll, Peter Ashton Jones and Martin Sonenberg, and Ronald Frank. Nicholson, at that time, served as secretary, and Smith as editorial secretary. In 1994, Magma worked with the City Lit, being located in Stukeley Street, off Drury Lane, and called themselves The Stukeley Press.
The first issue of Magma featured eleven poets, and the second, edited by Boll, included work by fourteen poets. An interview with poet Carol Ann Duffy was published in the third. In their Autumn 1995 newsletter, the Suffolk Poetry Society called Magma "well presented and printed", noting their "good selection of poetry." In later issues, reviews have also had an important place in the magazine.
The subtitle in the initial issues was "New Poetry from Around the World", which they stopped using after No. 18, and the cover became similar to as it is today from Magma 27, the Autumn 2003 issue. The current subtitle for the magazine is "The poetry magazine with a different editor every issue", and the issues are now themed, with the issue editors specialising in the said kind of poetry. The first themed issue, however, was No. 19 which was edited by Mick Delap. The current cover design pattern for Magma was first taken up in No. 56 – "The Poetry of Clothes", edited by the poets Julia Bird and Helen Mort. It was further tweaked, although only a little, in No. 65, and then in No. 68.

Later years

In 2005, Magma, working with SeaBritain 2005, conducted a poll to identify the UK's "favourite sea poem". The poem 'Sea Fever', published in 1900 by John Masefield, the UK Poet Laureate between 1930 and 1967, won the vote. Some of the other poems included in the top 10 were Martin Newell's 'The Song of the Waterlily', Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', and 'Christmas At Sea' by Robert Louis Stevenson.
In "celebration of 50 issues of Magma", a new poetry competition was launched in October 2011. The first ever judge for the competition was George Szirtes. After 2011, the competition has been judged by such poets as Caroline Bird, Daljit Nagra Marvin Thompson, Victoria Kennefick, and Andrew McMillan. The list of winners has included Maggie Smith, Inua Ellams, Jonathan Edwards, James Pollock, and Mona Arshi, who was the winner of the inaugural competition for her poem 'Hummingbird', and judge for the 2017/18 competition.
Celebrating 25 years, the Open Pamphlet Competition was announced in 2018 by Lisa Kelly, Chair of Magma. The inaugural winner was Alice Willitts's Dear, selected by the board members and published in 2019. The later winners of the competition have been: Alexa Winik, for Close River, Asim Khan, for Annihilation, and Michael Greavy for The Man Who Made Up Trees.
In 2020, the University of Central Lancashire-based poet and researcher Yvonne Reddick was awarded an AHRC grant of £92,720. A proposition was to work with Magma to inspire writing about the environment. The said issue was published in Autumn/October 2021, as Magma 81 – "Anthropocene". Reddick was also an editor, with Adam Lowe, of the "Loss" issue, in which they commissioned "a series of poems" that would explore loss. One of the poems, 'The Little Miracles' written by Malika Booker, went on to win the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2020.
In 2021, the team launched their then 27-year archive on the Exact Editions platform, which also contains many other journals' archives, such as those of The Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation.

Publication

Today, Magma receives well over "thousands of submissions" from the UK and abroad, and a large number of poets and artists of related fields have so far worked towards editing its many issues. Some of the more popular names include Clare Pollard, Roddy Lumsden, Helen Mort, Hannah Lowe, Ilya Kaminsky, Victoria Kennefick and Ian McEwan. Below is an extensive list of people who have edited Magma since 1994.

1994

  • 1 : Laurie Smith
  • 2 : David Boll
  • 3 : Vicci Bentley

    1995

  • 4 : Helen Nicholson
  • 5 : Mark Reid
  • 6 : Rick Roots

    1996

  • 7 : Mick Delap
  • 8 : Martin Sonenberg
  • 9 : John Stammers

    1997

  • 10 : Sarah Brown
  • 11 : Tim Kindberg

    1998

  • 12 : Mary MacRae
  • 13 : Jane Ormerod

    1999

  • 14 : Gautam Naik
  • 15 : Laurie Smith

    2000

  • 16 : David Boll
  • 17 : Karen Green
  • 18 : Mary MacRae

    2001

  • 19 – "New Love Poems": Mick Delap
  • 20 : Helen Nicholson
  • 21 : Laurie Smith

    2002

  • 22 : David Boll
  • 23 : Karen Green
  • 24 : Pat Ransford

    2003

  • 25 – "Poetry on Foreign Lands": Tim Kindberg
  • 26 – "Questions of travel": Mick Delap
  • 27 – "Same-sex relationships": Tim Robertson

    2004

  • 28 : Laurie Smith
  • 29 : David Boll

    2004/05

  • 30 – "10th Anniversary Issue": Karen Green

    2005

  • January – "10th Anniversary Anthology": Tim Robertson
  • 31 : John Stammers
  • 32 – "Measuring the Sea": Mick Delap
  • 33 – "The unnoticed, the ignored": Tim Kindberg

    2006

  • 34 : Mark McGuinness
  • 35 : Tim Robertson
  • 36 – "Inscapes – Charting the Interior": Anne-Marie Fyfe

    2007

  • 37 : Laurie Smith
  • 38 : David Boll
  • 39 : David Morphet

    2008

  • 40 – "Passions and Obsessions": Roddy Lumsden
  • 41 : Karen Green & Linda Black
  • 42 : Laurie Smith & Jacqueline Saphra

    2009

  • 43 : David Boll & Andrew Neilson
  • 44 : Tim Kindberg & Rosie Shepperd
  • 45 : Clare Pollard

    2010

  • 46 : Jacqueline Saphra & Norbert Hirschhorn
  • 47 : Annie Freud & Roberta James
  • 48 : Laurie Smith & Rob A Mackenzie

    2011

  • 49 : Julia Bird
  • 50 : Clare Pollard & Mary Tymkow
  • 51 : Jacqueline Saphra & Ian McEwan

    2012

  • 52 – "Putting On The Mask": Roberta James & Helen Nicholson
  • 53 – "Poetry and Music": Rob A Mackenzie & Kona Macphee
  • 54 – "The Visible and the Invisible": Judy Brown & Cherry Smyth

    2013

  • 55 – "The Soul & The Machine": Tim Kindberg & Karen McCarthy Woolf
  • 56 – "The Poetry of Clothes": Julia Bird & Helen Mort
  • 57 – "The Shape of the Poem": Ian McEwen & Hannah Lowe

    2014

  • 58 – "The Music of Words": Laurie Smith & Richard Morris
  • 59 – "Breaks": Roberta James & Alex Pryce
  • 60 – "Freedom": Rob A Mackenzie & Tony Williams

    2015

  • 61 – "The Street": Jon Sayers & Nick Sunderland
  • 62 – "Violence": Chris Kerr & Kayo Chingonyi
  • 63 – "Conversation": Susannah Hart & Lisa Kelly

    2016

  • 64 – "Risk": Dom Bury & Jon Stone
  • 65 – "Revolution": Laurie Smith & Jane R Rogers
  • 66 – "Comedy": John Canfield & Ella Frears

    2017

  • 67 – "Bones & Breath": Rob A. Mackenzie & A.B. Jackson
  • 68 – "Margins": David Floyd & Lucy Howard-Taylor
  • 69 – "The Deaf Issue": Lisa Kelly & Raymond Antrobus

    2018

  • 70 – "Europe": Susannah Hart & Paul Stephenson
  • 71 – "The Film Issue": Cheryl Moskowitz & Stav Poleg
  • 72 – "The Climate Change Issue": Matt Howard, Fiona Moore & Eileen Pun

    2019

  • 73 – "Changeling": Ella Frears & Richard Scott
  • 74 – "Work": Benedict Newbery & Pauline Sewards
  • 75 – "Loss": Yvonne Reddick & Adam Lowe

    2020

  • 76 – "Resistencia": Leo Boix & Nathalie Teitler
  • 77 – "Act Your Age": Gboyega Odubanjo, Selina Rodrigues & Christine Webb
  • 78 – "Collaborations": David Floyd & Alice Willitts

    2021

  • 79 – "Dwelling": Zoë Brigley, Kristian Evans & Rob A. Mackenzie
  • 80 – "Avatars": Petra Kamula, Golnoosh Nour & Richard Skinner
  • 81 – "Anthropocene": Maya Chowdhry, Cheryl Moskowitz & Yvonne Reddick

    2022

  • 82 – "Obsidian": Nick Makoha, Gboyega Odubanjo & Zakia Carpenter-Hall
  • 83 – "Solitude": Isabelle Baafi, Ilya Kaminsky & Lisa Kelly
  • 84 – "Physics": Susannah Hart and Stav Poleg

    2023

  • 85 – "Poems for schools": Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Laurie Smith & Gill Ward
  • 86 – "Food": Ella Frears & Sean Wai Keung
  • 87 – "Islands": Niall Campbell, Fiona Moore & Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa

    2024

  • 88 – "Underworld": Leo Boix, Ella Duffy & Kate Simpson
  • 89 – "Performance": Mariam Chaudhri, David Floyd & Josiane Smith
  • 90 – "Grassroots": Lisa Kelly & Patrizia Longhitano

    2025

  • 91 – "In the Flesh": Aoife Lyall & Victoria Kennefick
  • 92 – "Ownership": Paul Stephenson, Kathy Pimlott & Danne Jobin
  • 93 – "The Liberation Issue": Isabelle Baafi, Sohini Basak & Tim Tim Cheng

    2026

  • 94 – "REMIX": Elontra Hall, Willie Lee Kinard III & Lola Oh
  • 95 – "Architecture": Leo Boix & Stav Poleg
Magma is often applauded for a unique approach of having "different editors for each issue." It is also known for the blog posts, and for the interviews, and the team organise launch events for the issues.

Team

The current Chair of Magma is the poet Lisa Kelly, who also edited "The Deaf Issue" with the poet Raymond Antrobus. Julia Bird, who edited two issues for the magazine, is one of the previous members on the board, alongside Gboyega Odubanjo. It now also includes, among others, Susannah Hart, Paul Stephenson, and Cheryl Moskowitz, who also edited the "Anthropocene" issue with Yvonne Reddick and Maya Chowdhry. As the reviews editor for the magazine, Aoife Lyall replaced Rob A. Mackenzie, who had been in the position for over ten years.