The London Magazine – February 2008/ March 2008 by Sara-Mae Tuson (acting ed.)
Short stories by Mary Michaels
Poems by Martyn Crucefix, Tim Turnbull, Agnes Meadows, Graham Hartill, Paul Birtill, Tom Chivers, Will Eaves, John McCullough, Kate Miller...
Theism and Atheism: Religion in 2008, Nicholas Moseley
Lost Writers, Trevor Hoyle
Jayne Anne Phillips, Nicholas Royle
Niall O’Sullivan on the Spoken Word Scene in the Press
Sumaila Umaisha talks with Vincent Chukweumeka Ike
Katy Evans-Bush reviews Annie Freud
Simon Darragh on Will Stone
James Wilkes reviews Esther Shalev-Gerz
Fiction
I wish I was Like You, Anthony Howcroft
Three Stories, Mary Michaels
Poetry
Rose red and autumn gleaming, Anne Stewart
Chasing Waves, John McCullough
Fire Lines, Charles Jason Lee
Two Poems, Emma Curran
A Stone, translated from Yves Bonnefoy, Pierre Ecrite, Alex Pestell
Three Poems, Paul Birtill
Being Tchaikovsky, Martyn Crucefix
Filters, Tim Turnbull
Swans in Thames, Tom Chivers
Two Poems, Agnes Meadows
Untitled, E. J. Bannatyne
Chestnuts, Will Eaves
No-man’s Land, Tolu Ogunlesi
Features
About war, poetry, Zen and translating Takahashi, Grevel Lindop talks with Lucien Stryk
Theism and Atheism: Religion in 2008, Nicholas Mosley
Lost Writers, Trevor Hoyle
The Wonderful North, Rodney Challis
Jayne Anne Phillips, Nicholas Royle
Watching Us Watching You: Recent press attention on the Spoken Word scene, Niall O’Sullivan
talks with Vincent Chukweumeka Ike, Sumaila Umaisha
Reviews
Katy Evans-Bush on Annie Freud
Simon Darragh on Will Stone
Penelope Shuttle on Images of Women
James Wilkes on Esther Shalev-Gerz
Cover: Graham Firth, The GNVQ Visit the British Museum, 2005, Linoprint, 36x30cm
EJ Bannatyne is eighteen years old, and has not been published elsewhere.
Paul Birtill has had a number of collections published by Hearing Eye including Collected Poems 1987-2003. He is also an established playwright and several of his plays have been staged on the London Fringe, including Squalor which was shortlisted for The Verity Bargate Award. Another of his plays, Happy Christmas, was performed last year at New End Theatre, Hampstead.
Tom Chivers is a writer, editor and promoter of poetry. Tom runs penned in the margins. He is Associate Editor of international literary journal Tears in the Fence. His poem Eavesdropping won Merit at the Nottingham International Poetry Competition 2002.
Martyn Crucefix works as a poet, teacher, reviewer, critic, translator and competition judge. He is a tutor with the Poetry School in London. His most recent collection is An English Nazareth (Enitharmon, 2004) and his new translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies was published by Enitharmon in 2006.
Emma Curran’s previous publications include Orbis and Dream Catcher. She is currently studying English literature at the University of Aberystwyth.
Simon Darragh is a poet and literary translator. A selection of his poetry translations from various languages, Unscrewing the Inscrutable, is forthcoming from Shoestring. You can contact Simon by email: simondarragh@hotmail.com.
Will Eaves was born in Bath in 1967 and lives in London. The Oversight (2001) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Best First Novel Award. He is the Arts Editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
Katy Evans-Bush was born in New York City and has lived in London since she was 19. Her poetry and essays have been published on both side of the Atlantic. She is a regular contributor to the Contemporary Poetry Review (www.cprw.com) and writes the blog Baroque in Hackney (www.baroqueinhackney.blogspot.com). Her first poetry collection, Me and the Dead, will be published by Salt in June.
Graham Hartill has collaborated on several translations of classical Chinese. Graham is currently writer-in-residence at HMP & YOI Parc, Bridgend. His selected poems, Cennau’s Bell, was published by the Collective Press in 2005 and his latest book, A Winged Head by Parthian in 2007.
Anthony Howcroft runs the European operation of a major technology organization. He has a diploma in creative writing form Oxford University and over 20 of his short stories have been published in various forms since 2005.
Trevor Hoyle’s novels The Man Who Travelled on Motorways, Vail and Blind Needle are published by John Calder. He was a principal contributor to the OUP Cuide to Fiction. He also writes radio drama, and his play GIGO won the Radio Times Drama Award.
Catherine Kemp is an artist, unkempt44@yahoo.com
Charles Jason Lee is the author of Pervasive Perversions (Free Association Books, 2005) and The Metaphysics of Mass Art- Cultural Ontology Volumes I and II (Mellen, 1999) and the poetry collections Lost Passports, Polaroid Noise, God’s Potato Peeler, and The Day Elvis Died.
Grevel Lindop lives in Manchester. His six collections of poems include Selected Poems (2001) and Playing With Fire (2006), both from Carcanet. His literary Guide to the Lake District won the Hunter Davies prize as Lakeland Book of the Year, and his travel book about Latin America, Travels on the Dance Floor, will be published by Deutsch in autumn 2008. www.grevel.co.uk.
John McCullough’s poetry has appeared in The Rialto, The Guardian, Ambit, Staple and Magma. His new pamphlet Cloudfish is with Pighog Press. He teaches creative writing at The Open University and the University of Sussex and lives in Brighton.
Agnes Meadows held the Farrago Slam Club’s Best Performer Award in 1998 and 1999. She currently runs two popular poetry events in London. Agnes has written four books of poetry, entitled You and Me, Quantum Love, Woman, and At Damascus Gate on Good Friday, the latter published by Flipped Eye Publishing in July 2005. A fifth book This One’s For You is due for publication in 2007. Agnes has also been an adviser on Poetry for Channel 4 TV.
Mary Michaels’ most recent poetry pamphlet is Assassins (Sea Cow, 2006). A book of prose fictions My Life in Films (2006) is available from The Other Press. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.
Kate Miller was named Southwark’s Poet of the Year in 2005 and awarded the PFD Poetry bursary to study at the University of London; her work appears in Bedford Square 2. She is presently a doctoral student at Goldsmiths.
Nicholas Mosley is the elder son of Sir Oswald Mosley and his first wife, Lady Cynthia Curzon. Ed: Eton and Balliol. He served in the Rifle Brigade in WWII from 1942. His novels include Accident and Hopeful Monsters (Whitbread Fiction Prize, 1990).
Tolu Ogunlesi was born in 1982. He is the author of a collection of poetry Listen to the Geckos Singing From a Balcony (Bewrite Books, UK, 2004). His fiction and poetry have been widely published. In 2007 he won a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry prize.
Niall O’Sullivan has performed poetry since 1997. His first collection is entitled You’re Not Singing Anymore (Waterways, 2004). Niall has hosted the Aromapoetry open mic with Nii Parkes as well as founding and co-hosting New Blood for three years at the Poetry Café with James Byrne. Niall hosts London’s biggest weekly open mic event, Poetry Unplugged. His second collection, Ventriloquism for Monkeys, was released in the Autumn of 2007.
Alex Pestell is a DPhil candidate and tutor at the University of Sussex. He edits the poetry website www.signalsmagazine.co.uk.
Nicholas Royle is the author of five novels—Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut and Antwerp – and one short story collection, Mortality. He has edited twelve anthologies. He teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Penelope Shuttle’s eighth collection, Redgrove’s Wife (Bloodaxe Books, 2006) was short-listed for The Forward Prize for Best Collection, and for the T S Eliot Prize. She lives in Cornwall.
Anne Stewart completed the Sheffield Hallam MA in Creative Writing in 2003. Anne is the founder of poetry p f, a growing show-case of today’s poets, and the poetry p f imprint.
Tim Turnbull is Writer in Residence at HMP Edinburgh. Stranded in Sub-Atomica and a limited edition of the poem Caligula on Ice are available from Donut Press.
Sumaila Isah Umaisha is the literary editor of New Nigerian Newspapers, Kaduna, Nigeria. He won the 2004 and the 2007 editions of the Literary Journalist of the Year Award (awarded by the Association of the Nigerian Authors).
James Wilkes has written poetry, criticism and radio comedy. www.renscombepress.co.uk.