LitfestWe’ve just taken delivery of copies of the first ever issue of Cake, the new poetry magazine that describes itself as Lancaster Literary Magazine. It has risen from the oven that is Lancaster University, edited by two of its undergraduate students, Andrew McMilland and Martha Sprackland, with Professor Paul Farley as associate editor.
Although the poems and reviews inside come from further that the university campus, combining familiar names (Woolworths by George Szirtes opens the magazine) with ones I hadn’t come cross before. It is perhaps fitting to the ambition of the magazine (cited in the impassioned editorial) the magazine closes with Amy Blakemore, also to be found in Bloodaxe’s Voice Recognition, celebrating new poetic voices for the 21st century.
It’s half four on a Friday. It arrived an hour or so ago. I’ve found a swooping variety of celebration, regret, unease and play in the few poems I’ve read. I like it.
Apparently the editors have ambitions for the magazine’s production values, so I can only see it going from strength to strength and we’re proud to be stocking the first I hope of many.
If you’re curious, then come down to the Poetry Bookcase and have a leaf …
