Tuesday 13 November 2007

Fin again

My copy of Issue 1 of Fin, the Nottingham-based poetry mag I mentioned here, arrived yesterday.
First impressions are important, and it got off on the right foot with me by a) Looking compact and smartly-produced, rather like an American chapbook; and b) telling you exactly where it stands from the off. It does this with two statements, one of which reads "Fin is funded by subscribers and nobody else", and the other which states, rather unusually "One or two poems in each issue of Fin are likely to have been published before. We like the new stuff, but we think it's ridiculous to insist that a good poem only has one outing. All we'd ask is that you let us know when and where." I like that idea - more magazines should try it.
Anyway, inside are poems and nothing else, and the line-up of poets is a very impressive one. You've got the likes of Hugo Williams, Ian McMillan, Sheenagh Pugh, Mark Halliday, John Lucas, Mairead Byrne, Martin Stannard and CJ Allen, as well as plenty of other names you'll recognise from the small press world. There's also HappenStance poet Gill McEvoy, whose poem Weather Forecasters was one of my favourites on first reading ( I liked CJ Allen's Poem a lot, too).
You can subscribe (£12 for four issues, £3.50 for one, cheques payable to Fin) by writing to Fin, PO Box 9207, Nottingham, NG14 7WP, England. I recommend it. Oh, and submissions go to the same address.

2 comments:

Rob said...

Yes, I saw this mentioned on Martin Stannard's blog a while back. It sounds good. I'll send off for a copy and see what I think.

Matt Merritt said...

If they can keep up this level of contributors, it will be excellent.