{"id":505,"date":"2024-07-25T17:10:55","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T16:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/?p=505"},"modified":"2024-07-25T17:10:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T16:10:56","slug":"magma-89-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/25\/magma-89-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Magma 89: Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I have a new poem published in Magma<\/em> 89: Performance<\/a> — and for the first time ever (I think) I’m named on the cover! Magma<\/em> is a long-running, elegantly produced poetry journal which rotates its editors with every themed instalment, ensuring a wider-than-normal range of content from issue to issue. I co-edited number 64, Risk<\/em>, nearly a decade ago, and had written for their blog<\/a> before even then. They were also one of the first journals to take a serious interest in my work, offering me a few spotlight pages back in 2012, for which I have Julia Bird<\/a> to thank. This time my thanks go to editors Mariam Chaudhri<\/strong>, David Floyd<\/strong> and Josiane Smith<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem, ‘Magician’s Trick with Scissors’, is from a sequence of Magician poems. The character last appeared in poems published in Berlin Lit<\/em> Issue 5<\/a>; he is a magician who has fled his Circle with a stolen something<\/em>, and is half hiding out, half preparing for an unwinnable battle ahead. Here’s the beginning of his latest outing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The rest of the issue contains abundant reviews, the winners of Magma<\/em>‘s annual competition (poems on the devastation in Palestine, linking birth to the Scapa Flow in Scotland, being overwhelmed by scenic beauty), an article by Niall O’Sullivan<\/strong> on the impact of the internet on the spoken word scene, and poems by, among others, Martha Sprackland<\/strong>, JP Seabright<\/strong>, Rebecca Watts<\/strong> and Jerold Yam<\/strong>. The theme of the issue lends itself readily to consideration of what, if anything, is not some kind of performance, or can avoid being construed as such. I noted two closely related titles: Harper Walton<\/strong>‘s ‘Baby Let’s Roleplay’ and Erica Hesketh<\/strong>‘s ‘Live action role-play’, both of which work through miniature sequences as if trying on clothes. In Walton’s poem, it’s metaphors being tested:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m an amoeba splitting
into two smaller amoeba
and you’re the wholeness I no longer feel

I’m an all black outfit
you’re the rainbow scarf a stranger
strangles my wearer to death with<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I like how you have to unpick the image of that second stanza to appreciate it fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Hesketh’s poem, meanwhile, a whole cast of characters are paraded, their stories glimpsed in a way that reminds me of the way epic poems recount battles (hence the title, which alludes to medieval reenactment):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paramedic arrives to deal with a minor incident
while the folk musician leads all the cows and beds

in song. The PA glances at her watch and nudges
the photographer, who is cleaning her lens again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I feel like there ought to be a recognised subgenre of poem, related to the list poem, of which this is an example — one in which many persons put in an appearance, but each enters and leaves the poem very briskly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a new poem published in Magma 89: Performance — and for the first time ever (I think) I’m named on the cover! Magma is a long-running, elegantly produced poetry journal which rotates its editors with every themed instalment, ensuring a wider-than-normal range of content from issue to issue. I co-edited number 64, Risk, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}