FLARESTACK

I'm not interested in reading poems that seem to be somebody putting on paper what they already know or trust or believe or have experienced and are going over that ground. The language isn't coming up with anything new because they're not asking it to. They don't need striking metaphors or new images because nothing is being discovered. There is a kind of poetry that has already sorted out what it 's going to do, and that doesn't interest me much

- aspiring poets won't go far wrong if they write in that spirit.

Obsessed doesn't want safe poems, doesn't want the poems you know you can write about what you know. I want poems that go to the high wire across the abyss. Don't walk it, dance it. You may find you can fly. Risk the fall. Test the boundaries. If you crash, crash with panache. Your poem may look safe to begin with, may start safe and quiet but take off. I hope it does. I love to see poets flying.

One of our eminent poets has said that all poems are love poems. I like that. My line is that a good poem is a  letter to God. Of course, you have to wonder whether God would enjoy "see-it-coming-a-mile-away" end-rhyme, or would find it boring and look for some other kind of dance in the words.

Please subscribe if you can afford to, or take a look at the magazine at the Poetry Library.

I  discourage email submissions - as I always end up printing the poems off to read anyway, and formatting may go down the tubes. But if you absolutely must submit by e-mail, please send your poems in the body of  an email message, or as a single attached document.

Do not send more than six poems.

Publication dates are the end of March, June, September & December (though we have been known to run late).

Please send an SAE with your work. In the absence of an SAE you are unlikely to get a reply (this is true of most little poetry magazines) unless your work is totally brilliant.

Please put your name on every sheet of paper and your name and address on every separate piece of work, typing your work if possible.

Do not send your only copy of a piece of work.

Please give a telephone number where possible, a daytime one or an evening one.

Please enclose brief biographical note about yourself and why/how you come to poetry.

The editors decision is pretty well final.

Contributions are welcome (in English only) from the UK and abroad, in any style of writing and on any subject.

Write to Flarestack Publishing,

8 Abbot’s way,

Pilton,

Somerset

BA4 4BN

UK

Phone: 01749 890019

E-mail: cannula.dementia@virgin.net