New Walk Magazine, Issue 1

The first issue of New Walk magazine is just out, and very interesting it is too. It really is wide-ranging: David Mason, Mark Ford, Alison Brackenbury, Tom Leonard, Peter Larkin, CJ Allen and Matt Merritt all thrown in beside one another, so you have a curious mix of styles and methods from full-rhyming metrical formalism to experimental modernism and everything in between. The editorial makes it clear that this is a deliberate policy.

There is a also a short story by Janice D. Soderling, a conversation between Alex Pryce and Gwyneth Lewis, and a batch of essays and reviews. And yes, my jaw dropped at the negative review of Mark Halliday’s HappenStance pamphlet, although the reviewer, Nicholas Friedman, succeeds in anticipating objections before they appear, for which he ought to be granted a degree of kudos – “Some may question the pertinence of a review that criticizes a collection for failing to achieve something – earnestness, for example – that it never claimed to achieve in the first place. “ Yes, they will, for certain... I’m not even convinced that earnestness is a virtue.

The magazine kicks off with three poems by me – ‘The X Factor’, ‘Online’ and ‘Soundings’. I was a little surprised the magazine chose to place these at the beginning, as they are strange, but maybe that was the idea. Matthew Stewart promises to review the magazine in the next few weeks, so you might get a fuller report from him.