IN THE MAGAZINE
Decompression by William Stephenson
Decompression The induction program’s willow pattern eyes and terracotta lips matched those of the woman I married in my first incarnation. She whispered, Just you and me darling me darling – a glitch, surely, A stutter in the software – so make yourself yourself. She...
read moreHOW TO BAKE A GINGERBREAD GIRL BY EMMA SIMON
HOW TO BAKE A GINGERBREAD GIRL by Emma Simon Paint blue icing on her fingertips, fingers that could snap with cold, dipped into fridges and glass chillers placing cockleshell cakes in pretty rows. Tie back her hair, dress her in sexless tabards, dab with jam. Press...
read moreHome by Neetha Kunaratnam
HOME by Neetha Kunaratnam June 23, 2016 I Go Home. We voted leave… Her indignant jaw trembled as she seethed, and the deadpan response I might have mustered froze on my lips, as she brandished a crumpled flyer and unleashed its litany of stats. I’m going I said and...
read moreTO DAVID FOSTER WALLACE by Ben Wilkinson
[See end of post for image credit] To David Foster Wallace by Ben Wilkinson Since I was old enough to know myself I’ve been trying to figure it out – the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing, like half the time I’d chuck it all in; throw...
read moreDragged Under by Ian Humphreys
DRAGGED UNDER by Ian Humphreys So many wet shaves in a lifetime. How many thousands and thousands? So many .............rituals at dawn’s bleached-bone altar, a falter of sharpened steel on skin. So much water feel it slide .............through your...
read moreA WITNESS by Amy Carrington
A WITNESS by Amy Carrington I've been watching the letterbox, I've been watching her at the letterbox. Her arm is stuck in the rectangle, but not stuck getting out she can't seem to get it any farther in. A gloss-eyed pot fox peers through the doily curtain with me,...
read moreSUBSCRIBE TO THE MAGAZINE
Three magazines a year delivered to your door. New subscribers receive the most recent magazine for free.
About the rialto
WELCOME
Welcome to the website for The Rialto, where you can find out who we are and what we do, read poems from the magazine, and connect up with our social media pages. You can buy subscriptions, single copies, pamphlets and books. You can learn how to submit your poetry for possible publication, and you can read articles and blogs by the editors, poets and guest writers.
The Rialto magazine is edited by Michael Mackmin with Fiona Moore and the help of Assistant Editors drawn from our Editor Development Programme.
We’d like to say thank you to our loyal subscribers and to the Arts Council of England whose support and encouragement over years have made possible The Rialto. We invite you, reader, to join the team: help make poetry happen by subscribing now.
THE MAGAZINE
The founding editors, Michael among them, believed in a ‘Republic of Poetry’, an inclusive and diverse world of poetry, one that was open to experiment in form and content. We strive to keep this vision alive.
The magazine appears three times a year and each issue, with its spacious A4 pages, has fifty or so poems, an editorial and occasional, commissioned, prose pieces. Most of the space is occupied by the best new poems we can find, all wrapped up in our famously vibrant beautiful covers.
The Rialto has been called ‘Simply the best’ by Carol Ann Duffy and ‘A terrific magazine’ by Seamus Heaney.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS
At the start of the new millennium The Rialto published a short run of first collections. In 2005 we turned our energy to publishing pamphlets and began our Bridge Pamphlets list. These have so far been by poets who we’ve asked to submit work, but this year we intend opening out the opportunity to have a pamphlet published. Do not submit yet, but do watch the website for an announcement. Oh, and we haven’t forgotten about first collections – we launched Dean Parkin’s The Swan Machine at last autumn’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
Laura Scott’s pamphlet What I Saw won the Michael Marks Award in 2014, and three of the early first collections were winners of major awards.
Competitions
Nature And Place Poetry Competition 2017
The winners of the competition have been announced and the long list published here
The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2016: results
We are delighted to announce that Sean Wai Keung has won The Rialto’s first Open Pamphlet Competition. Hannah Lowe, our judge, says: “I loved these poems for their simultaneous sense of puzzlement and wisdom about the world, and specifically the things Sean Wai Keung...
read moreON SOCIAL MEDIA
Rialto poetry, blogs and news
POEMS IN THE RIALTO
The purpose of this section of the site is to allow us to showcase or preview poems in our publications.
We hope to invite writers of the poems to respond and give their view of the work.
Decompression by William Stephenson
Decompression The induction program’s willow pattern eyes and terracotta lips matched those of the woman I married in my first incarnation. She whispered, Just you and me darling me darling – a glitch, surely, A stutter in the software – so make yourself yourself. She...
read more
HOW TO BAKE A GINGERBREAD GIRL BY EMMA SIMON
HOW TO BAKE A GINGERBREAD GIRL by Emma Simon Paint blue icing on her fingertips, fingers that could snap with cold, dipped into fridges and glass chillers placing cockleshell cakes in pretty rows. Tie back her hair, dress her in sexless tabards, dab with jam. Press...
read more
Home by Neetha Kunaratnam
HOME by Neetha Kunaratnam June 23, 2016 I Go Home. We voted leave… Her indignant jaw trembled as she seethed, and the deadpan response I might have mustered froze on my lips, as she brandished a crumpled flyer and unleashed its litany of stats. I’m going I said and...
read more
TO DAVID FOSTER WALLACE by Ben Wilkinson
[See end of post for image credit] To David Foster Wallace by Ben Wilkinson Since I was old enough to know myself I’ve been trying to figure it out – the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing, like half the time I’d chuck it all in; throw...
read moreTHE BLOG
This tide of Humber – Imtiaz Dharker
The idea of poems crossing borders into different art forms has always excited me, and the BBC’s Contains Strong Language festival offered a chance for multiple crossings between dance, music and poetry. My poem This Tide of Humber, commissioned by the BBC for...
read more
Diamond Dogs Rule OK
Writing The Hounds and their Half-Hound Master Bowie’s Diamond Dogs was originally meant to be a sprawling stage show – a glam rock dystopia on roller skates. Its heady post-apocalyptic imagery and dramatic shifts in mood and tone certainly give it the feel of...
read more
On ‘Station to Station’
On ‘Station to Station’ Station to Station is my favourite David Bowie album, and it seemed the natural starting point when I was asked to write a poem about the Dame. Its immediate successor, Low, is the better, more important record but Station to Station has this...
read more
SEAN WAI KEUNG
‘i think i want to write about race’ really thats really cool can you do that arent you white o so you decided to go full american then will you send me your poems i think thats a good move for you are they going to be performance poems i thought you hated that sort...
read more
