Raceme

18/04/2023

Dear subscribers, contributors and friends, here comes the last ever issue, no. 14, packed with the usual rich mix of poems, essays and thoughts about poetry. Contributors to this swan song include Jo Clement, Penelope Shuttle, David Briggs, Martyn Crucefix, Rob A. Mackenzie, Tony Hoagland, Robert Frost and many more. Orders through the website, www.racemepoetry.com Best wishes to all as we sign off for ever. Do buy a copy!

29/01/2023

Dear supporters and subscribers, we are very sorry to say that Raceme will close after the next issue (14). It wasn't possible in the end for Sophie, as a very busy teacher, to take on all the work involved as editor, and I had decided to pull back after 12 issues. It's been a wonderful experience to create and give shape to Raceme and to see it starting to make its way in the world, but it always made a loss financially and took a huge amount of work to put together and keep together. We - Sophie, Dominic Fisher, David Briggs and I - all agreed that it was better to end strongly than try to continue. We'd like to thank you all for being involved. Raceme 14 will appear in March. Anyone owning all 14 issues might have a collector's item! All best wishes, Matthew

06/08/2022

Here is issue 13, rather delayed through handover of the primary editor role from me to Sophie Thomas. Major pieces here include D. Harvey on the role of silence in poetry, illustrated in the work of Denise Riley and Ilya Kaminsky, a retrospective on the life and work of Norman Cameron - a poet less known than he should be - by John Lucas, and a fascinating conversation between Carrie Etter and Claire Crowther on the relationship between science and poetry. David Punter reviews a collection by Gil Arzola on the migrant experience, with its destitution and terrible hardships, and Dominic Fisher reviews collections by Lesley Saunders and Stewart Carswell. German polymath Jeff Beer, an artist, poet, musician, sculptor and photographer (some of whose photos and sculptures also figure in these pages) writes about the importance to him of sound and rhythm in poetry, while I reflect on collaborating with him on translations of his poems. Apart from all this, the usual swathe of poems by budding and established authors gathers work from many quarters and testifies to a rich divergence of outlooks on poetry, happily contained here in implicit conversation with each other.

22/11/2021

Issue 12 is about to appear, with its usual mix of reviews, poems, conversations and essays, accompanied by fine artwork. Besides reviews of new collections by Helen Ivory, Parwana Fayyaz, M. R. Peacocke, Carol Coates, James Harpur, James Peake and Selima Hill, and accompanying poems from many of these, the issue also has poems by, among others, Osip Mandelstam, Ian Duhig, Philip Gross and John Greening. Many aspects of women’s lives figure in these pages: women in Afghanistan, for instance (with a poignant posthumous poem from a woman murdered by her husband), alongside ordinary mothers and grandmothers, as well as women constrained and disempowered by masculine tropes of ‘female madness’. Another theme that emerged as we put the issue together is that of migrants, refugees, and exile more generally - a state which poetry itself often seems to share, not least because it tends to regard things from creatively odd or marginal angles and so see them differently and afresh.

25/05/2021

Here comes the spring/summer issue... Out next week. See www.racemepoetry.com

Karen Leeder introduces her fine translations of a pandemic-interrogating sequence by German poet Volker Braun. Deborah Harvey considers the tension between revelation and concealment in the work of Bishop and Plath. Paul Matthews pays tribute to Peter Abbs, who died this year. John Lucas goes in search of forgotten poet James Montgomery, a contemporary of Wordsworth, and Diana Collecott remembers the last days of Anne Stevenson.

Reviews of collections by Annie Freud, Di Slaney, Carole Bromley, Hannah Hodgson, Diana Hendry, Hamish Whyte, Peter Kahn, Nina Mingya Powles, Jeffery Wainwright and Rob A. Mackenzie, with poems by many of the reviewed authors.

Poems by Tamar Yoseloff, Dominic Fisher, Ann Williams, Pat Simmons, Myra Schneider, Rosie Jackson, Alyson Hallett, Tim Cu***ng. John Freeman, Matthew Caley, Christopher Heath, Stephen Payne, DS S. Maolalai, Mat Riches, Sue Dymoke, William Thompson and Sharon Phillips.

17/11/2020

The new issue is out and as usual contains a wealth of poems, reviews, essays and conversations. Contributors include David Briggs on Ian Duhig, Shanta Acharya on Anne Stevenson, Philip Lyons on Julie-ann Rowell, Tony Roberts on Lawrence Sail, Tom Phillips on Deborah Harvey, Pat Simmons on Penelope Shuttle, David Clarke on Jonathan Davidson, Cathy Wilson on Katrina Naomi and Paul Matthews on Andie Lewenstein. The magazine also features a major piece on the Bulgarian First World War poet Geo Milev, a contemporary of Eliot, who has been almost unknown in the UK until now. With poems by Peter Abbs, Myra Schneider, Peter Oswald, Linda Saunders, Frances-Anne King, Rupert Loydell, Penelope Shuttle and many others, this autumn issue is a rich harvest. Do subscribe and help keep all the conversations going.

The easiest way to subscribe is through the website at www.racemepoetry.com

12/06/2020

Fine new website at: https://www.racemepoetry.com
where you can see our backlist, subscribe and leave comments

Raceme is a Bristol-based literary magazine, edited by Matthew Barton with co-editors David Briggs and Dominic Fisher.

02/06/2020

Dear readers, authors and subscribers, Raceme 9 is at the designers and soon to appear with its usual mix of reviews, poems, conversations and essays, accompanied by fine artwork. Alyson Hallett and Mat Osmond discuss and illustrate ways in which poems and images can enhance each other and John Lucas offers a fascinating account of Ivor Gurney’s sanity and sense of place. David Briggs recalls Roddy Lumsden so warmly and vividly that you wish very much you had met him (if you didn’t), while Karen Leeder introduces a sequence of poems by Durs Grünbein on the destruction of Dresden and its aftermath, in her own finely crafted versions. There are poems by, among others, Pameli Benham, Andy Brown, Carrie Etter, Rebecca Gethin, James Peake, Mark Roper, Penelope Shuttle, Myra Schneider and Claire Williamson, and reviews of Jean Atkin, David Cook, Ann Drysdale, Clive James on Larkin, Kei Miller, and Jack Thacker. See our fine new website (www.racemepoetry.com) and do subscribe there or buy a single issue. We keep going, just, and all support greatly appreciated!

02/12/2019

Cover of new issue, magazine out in a week or so...

27/11/2019

Raceme 8 will be out mid-December. (Sorry for the delay.) With a focus on ecology, politics and our relationship to Europe, it carries a wide range of reviews and prose alongside fine poems from local and national poets. Poets featured or reviewed include Raymond Antrobus, David Briggs, David Clarke, Dominic Fisher, Rebecca Gethin, Deborah Harvey, Lydia Kennaway, Czesław Miłosz, Katrina Naomi, Jim Peake, Tom Phillips, Mark Roper, Julie-ann Rowell, Pat Simmons, Claire Williamson and Shirley Wright. Watch this space for new issue cover pic. Thanks for your support.

03/04/2019

Raceme 7 off to the printers tomorrow, and out before Easter...

18/03/2019

Raceme, issue 7, April 2019

Searching for Sappho
Celebrating women poets
John Lucas on Frost and Bishop
Philip Gross & Lesley Saunders collaborate
John F. Deane and James Harpur in conversation
Deborah Harvey on the Gloucester Road
Helena Nelson on Sinéad Morrissey
Penelope Shuttle on various beasts
Philip Lyons on broken Britain
Catherine Peters on boasting
The rain in Roscommon
Plenty of poems

Single copies (£7.50) and subscriptions at:
www.racemepoetry.com
[email protected]

Literary Magazine Poetry Writing