Magna Poetry: M96: The Antarctic Issue Launch

a primordial conversation emerges ghostlike out of the gross inadequacy of language
Filippo Rossi

Come celebrate the launch of this edition of Magma Poetry, one of the UK’s leading poetry magazines. This issue is themed entirely around Antarctic poetry: there will be readings, video, a projected backdrop of rarely seen Antarctic photos, with an ambient soundtrack.

Each issue of Magma has a unique theme and team of editors. The editors for M96: The Antarctic Issue are poet and novelist, Cheryl Moskowitz, Antarctic specialists and poets, Elizabeth Lewis Williams and Branwell Roberts. This 106pp issue features diverse and inspiring articles and poetry from an international array of writers as well as a stunning four-page foldout of photographs taken through a lens made from ice by South African environmental photographer Jean Brundrit.

M96: The Antarctic

From the imagined world of the Greek philosophers to Māori stories of far-southern oceans, the idea of Antarctica has existed for centuries. Claimed by several nations whose claims have been frozen, Antarctica is now governed by international treaty: a continent owned by no one, for which all are responsible.

The poems in this issue have absolutely fulfilled the Editors’ expectation and promise to our readers that we would take them on a journey, not just to the Ice, but to a hoped-for future or a place within. In the words of Keith Jarrett, our Inspired Poet for this issue, “we dreamed we might still steer this ship towards some light…”

Join us on this expedition, with poetry the means of Antarctic discovery for us all!

Poets presenting live on the night:

Jane Burn – artist, poet and hybrid writer, author of The Apothecary of Flight and A Thousand Miles from the Sea (winner of the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year 2023/4).
Zoë Green – Scottish writer and poet living in Vienna and Berlin
Katie Hale – Poet and novelist, author of The Edge of Solitude (A New Scientist Best Science Fiction Book of 2024)
Rochelle Hanslow – Scottish neurodivergent poet, writer and essayist living with chronic illness
Jan Kerr – Scottish artist and poet
Eithne Longstaff – Engineer turned poet, born and brought up in Co. Tyrone
Olga Maslova – Ukrainian-American poet, librettist and theatre designer
Becky May – Manchester based New Northern Poet with Words up North
Fiona Ritchie Walker – Scots-born poet, former journalist and recipient of New Writing North Northern Promise Award

Copies of Magma will be on sale at the bookshop, at specially discounted rate for those attending the launch! Booking encouraged!