What’s It Like to Edit a Poetry Magazine for the First Time? [UK]:
In my innocence, I assumed that the bulk of the work would be in reading the several thousand poems that are submitted for each issue, selecting the strongest ones, then trying to create a coherent whole out of them. Laurie and I had several intense email debates about certain poems; each of us had the experience of changing our minds about poems after slugging it out for a few virtual rounds. Which makes you realise how subjective the whole business can be.
However, I was to discover that the selection of poems, although one major part of the process, is only one dimension. Poems alone do not a Magma make.
Much thought and debate went into deciding on the prose articles. Laurie and I each wrote one, and others were commissioned. And I haven’t even begun to list the administrative tasks - things like getting hold of poets’ addresses and biographies and photographs. Never mind that, actually getting hold of certain poets at all could sometimes be a tortuous business.
This entry was posted by Ivy
on Thursday, December 04, 2008 at 11:05 PM.
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