Competitions
Poetry competition 2025 winners
Read about the winners and shortlist here.
Subscribing to The Magazine
You can buy the Magazine or subscribe here
Poetry Submissions
Poetry submissions to the magazine.
"What news on the Rialto?"
Articles, featured poems, news, newsletters and events, new issues and publications, and submission calls.
News
Rialto news – November/December 2019
Dodo Provocateur Anita Pati’s prize winner pamphlet, which we published in the first week in September, had it’s London launch on September 24th at The Poet an aptly chosen pub in Baring Street (N1 3DS). I put the post code in because I must have been one of the last...
The Rialto Pamphlet Competition Result
The following, in no particular order, are the shortlisted poets and pamphlets William Stephenson ‘The Butterfly Factory’ Rachael Matthews ‘Naming Boats’ Anita Pati ‘Dodo Provocateur’ Kat Dixon ‘Letters to Ex-Lovers I Will Never Send’ Patrick Davidson Roberts ‘The...
Shortlist for the Pamphlet Prize announced
We are very pleased to announce Richard Scott’s Shortlist for our The Rialto Pamphlet Prize. The Shortlisted titles are, in no particular order, My Mother's Extraordinary Hair The Butterfly Factory Nude Against A Rock Naming Boats Dodo Provocateur Letters to ex lovers...
Articles and newsletters
Laura Scott goes to Greece
My Rialto pamphlet won the Michael Marks prize, and part of the prize is that you get to go to Greece for two weeks to be the poet in residence for Harvard University’s Hellenic summer school. I think if someone were to ask me what was the best single thing about this experience, I would say that it showed me how to write about big things without fear.
‘Lessons from Press Gang and other submissions’
Rishi Dastidar and I are working closely with The Rialto editor Michael Mackmin on a programme designed to teach us about the process and philosophy of poetry editing…
The Cab Rank Principle
I’ve been thinking about the law over the last couple of weeks. Not that I’m in any trouble I hasten to add – apart from the usual one that I’m sure some of you have also been quizzed on by other members of the family…
“Start lying about your age”, and other thoughts on biographical notes
As I write this, the latest edition of The Rialto is at the proofing stage and the last of the biographical notes are…
What really happens on a Rialto editing day
Holly Hopkins and I, your editorial developees, have been asked to shed some light upon what we actually get up to when attending an editorial meeting of The Rialto…
‘Hey, have you had your hair cut?’
We’ve had the decorators in at home for the last few weeks.
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 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 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 several of our first collections are winners of major awards.
“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 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.”
