IN THE RIALTO
Summer 2019
‘I think this is a really good time for poetry. If anybody ever thought poetry was a luxury, that’s gone. Poetry is a necessary remedy to a lot of the darkness we are subject to.’ Tracy K Smith, USA Poet Laureate, The Observer 30.06.19 The Rialto No. 92 is now out in...
On scientists and their poetry
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself using the phrase ‘think like a poet’ a lot, especially as the final idea I want to leave people with, at the end of beginning to write workshops. It sounds sufficiently exhortatory (especially if I’m windmilling my arms while...
HOME (FOR A MONTH) IN GRASMERE
In March this year it was my great fortune to stay in Grasmere with the Wordsworth Trust as their poet in residence. The reach of the Trust is huge and I would urge anyone who doesn’t know about them to find out: https://wordsworth.org.uk/ The brief for the residency...
THE RIALTO 91 – WHAT’S IN IT?
So what’s in the new issue of The Rialto when it eventually escapes from the Babylon of the Royal Mail and gets itself delivered? Does it live up to the old Poet Laureate’s remark, back in the 1980’s, about being ‘very full and varied’? I think it does. There’s a good...
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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 working with Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Will Harris and Degna Stone, who are graduates of 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 Rialto is the poetry magazine to read – publishing poems that are formally inventive and alive to the ‘here and now’ of the world, but always with a commitment to the humane and compassionate qualities I believe the best poetry has. It has led the way in nurturing new talent.”
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. We also run a regular poetry pamphlet competition which has become a fixture of how we discover new work. Oh, and we haven’t forgotten about first collections – we launched Dean Parkin’s The Swan Machine at last autumn’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, and published Matt Howard’s award winning Gall in 2018.
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.
“The magazine is consistently one of, if not the best spotter of emerging talent in the UK – as a writer you know that you have arrived if one of your poems goes in. It’s more than an imprimatur of quality – it’s a rite of passage.”
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
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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.
FIGHT SONG by Paula Bohince
FIGHT SONG by Paula Bohince August 2014 A crisis on a monitor, and there’s this football field, white chalk formalizing grass, a spongy black track where I walk off my no-baby weight. A deadline has passed, so a journalist will leave this world violently as I go...
Tristia by Jacqueline Saphra
Tristia by Jacqueline Saphra My friend, we’ve been anchored here for years arguing the toss: semi-colon versus the long dash, our views on Ovid’s Tristia though I haven’t read it, nor have you - and as the room rocks gently underneath us you pour for me a rare tea...
The Booze by Charlie Bird
THE BOOZE by now, the booze is you, you are the booze, mid-rant you stand up too fast, keel over, turn your ankle and I'm supposed to help you up. Oh! the heat and stench of you cursing the world, cursing me, you burst into tears, blurt, 'I'm hurt', that is:...
A VISION FOR THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FUTURE OF EAST ANGLIA by Matt Haw
Michael and I had a moment of mild mutual surprise: I said I’d blog about this poem and he said he’d mentioned it in his draft newsletter. Turns out we are both fans of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker…
THE BLOG
Pamphlet competition shortlist announced
We are very pleased to announce that the Shortlisted Titles for the 2020 Rialto Pamphlet Competition are, in no particular order, For The Apocalypse Team, Trombone, Hello, Before After, Queerfella, Fridges, Shit Happens, The Sushi Chef’s Wife, The Presence of Absence,...
Nature and Place 2020 winners announced
We have now received the results of the Nature and Place Poetry Competition back from Pascale Petit and are delighted to announce that the winners are: 1st Prize of £1000 – ‘Hermit Crab in a Doll’s Head’ by Cindy Botha 2nd Prize of £500 – ‘Insects’ by P Q R Anderson...
WORDSWORTH, NATURE, ETC.
Had he lived William Wordsworth would have been 250 years old this April (April 7th.,). Celebrations were planned, particularly in Grasmere, Cumbria, home of the excellent Wordsworth Trust. I’m thinking that actual celebrations will not now take place, so here is a...
The Rialto Newsletter, February 2020
93 The Rialto No.93 is out in the world. Storm Ciara is bustling about making working in the garden unattractive, so here I am sat down to celebrate the new issue. It is actually just a rather wet and windy day here but the weather forecasters seem to have been...