{"id":1764,"date":"2013-10-21T11:33:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T11:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2025-02-03T12:05:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T12:05:20","slug":"editing-for-the-rialto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2013\/10\/21\/editing-for-the-rialto\/","title":{"rendered":"Editing for The Rialto"},"content":{"rendered":"

The autumn issue has just arrived. This time it felt different: my name is on page 2, as one of the Assistant Editors (note the capitals), along with Abigail Parry.\u00a0 We have got this job for the next two issues, winter and spring, under The Rialto<\/em>\u2019s Editor Development Programme<\/a>. which is being run in conjunction with the Poetry School<\/a>.\u00a0 We are helping Editor Michael Mackmin choose the poems for the winter issue.\u00a0 Then we will have 15 pages of the spring issue to edit ourselves.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to write here about the experience.\u00a0 Part of that is, of course, the poems \u2013 what it\u2019s like to read unpublished poems in large numbers.\u00a0 Panning for gold.\u00a0 Hoping to find a nugget the size of my fist.\u00a0 And what it\u2019s like to turn the chosen poems into a magazine.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll also write about other aspects.\u00a0 I knew that a poetry magazine is much more than the sum of its poems.\u00a0 Design, money, online presence, publicity and marketing, distribution, associated activities such as readings and competitions, money again…\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t realise the complexity of some decisions.\u00a0 We went to a meeting of The Rialto<\/em>\u2019s advisory board in Norwich, and were impressed by the quality of the discussion, and the people Michael has got supporting him \u2013 staff members Nick and Helen (listed on page 2, more about them here<\/a>), and the \u2018local heroes\u2019, as Michael calls them, who act as advisors.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be possible to write about everything.\u00a0 There are some subjects that poetry magazines tend not to talk about: their subscription numbers, for example.\u00a0 But the larger ones, including The Rialto<\/em>, are registered charities, so you can read their accounts on the Charity Commission website<\/a>.\u00a0 For the avoidance of doubt, Michael made it clear at the start that the secrecy of the confessional applies to individual submissions.<\/p>\n

He was generous to name us in the new issue, for which all we did was proof-reading \u2013 our first serious task because we started at the end of the magazine production cycle, when it was about to go to press.<\/p>\n

Not that proof-reading is easy.\u00a0 Contributions to The Rialto<\/em> have to be sent by post.\u00a0 This is not an electronic-age anachronism.\u00a0 Printing out poems and posting them, with SAE and covering letter, takes a little time and thought.\u00a0 Time and thought is good, for submitting to poetry magazines. \u00a0At least it is good from the editor\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

So: every time there\u2019s a new issue, Michael has to type out around sixty poems from the paper copies.\u00a0 Near impossible never to miss out a word, or a line, or even a stanza.\u00a0 Or change something slightly.\u00a0 Get indentations wrong.\u00a0 When reading through the proofs, already corrected once, I was haunted by the memory of reading a poem in another poetry magazine which had been republished from the previous issue, with an apology: it had been attributed to the wrong author.<\/p>\n

The subconscious can take over when copy typing.\u00a0 Michael asked us to check the two poems by Les Murray extra carefully.\u00a0 Once, Les Murray had written in a poem for The Rialto<\/em>, \u2018God exists\u2019.\u00a0 Michael transcribed this, rather excellently, as \u2018God exits\u2019.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I did find mistakes, which, perversely, made me pleased \u2013 that such a nerdish activity had real purpose.\u00a0 No missed stanzas or wrong names.\u00a0 Mostly the occasional missed-out or mistyped word (not the sort of mistype a spell check would find), and wrong spacings, and one mis-spelt name.\u00a0 I made a few layout suggestions, most of which weren\u2019t valid because the magazine looks different when it\u2019s three-dimensional, with a spine.<\/p>\n

The number and names of poets listed in the contents page matched those on the back cover, but the biographies were one short.\u00a0 One poet has reason to be grateful\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m not that good at it.\u00a0 I actually read two sets of proofs, with a tricky conversion process done by Nick in between, from word document to properly laid-out and paged pdf.\u00a0 I picked up things in the second set that I hadn\u2019t noticed first time round.\u00a0 Already I am thinking that poetry magazine editors have superhuman powers.\u00a0 And hoping someone isn\u2019t, right now, contacting Michael to point out a mistake.<\/p>\n

While an issue is being finalised, reading of submissions has to continue.\u00a0 Michael let us in gently.\u00a0 He gave us each two fat yellow folders, containing photocopies of around 30 submissions.\u00a0 After a couple of weeks the three of us met and went through them, to calibrate reactions.\u00a0 Then we went through the same process again, with another 30. \u00a0We marked them No and Maybe, with the occasional Yes.<\/p>\n

I think we were all surprised that our No\u2019s and Maybe\u2019s matched so closely.\u00a0 One poet\u2019s work got a unanimous Yes, and the only decision needed was which poem(s) to take.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Otherwise, the discussion centred on which of the Maybe\u2019s could make it to a Yes \u2013 with one exception in the first round, where Michael was the only one to notice a short and intriguing poem.\u00a0 He persuaded us easily.\u00a0 That submission had been the last in my pile.\u00a0 Lesson for me: don\u2019t read too much at once, and learn to notice when you\u2019ve reached capacity.\u00a0 If you read the submissions twice (which I\u2019m doing, so far), change the order you read them in.<\/p>\n

Michael has now given us each around 50 submissions, not photocopied.\u00a0 We are to read these and shortlist the ones we like enough to bring to a meeting, where we will all read each others\u2019 and make decisions.\u00a0 No Michael as a safety-net for the rejection of poems not shortlisted.\u00a0 Our intention is to reduce the backlog of poems to be read.\u00a0 We are just starting on poems sent in July.<\/p>\n

Next time I\u2019ll write about the experience and process of reading the poems.<\/p>\n

Fiona Moore<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The autumn issue has just arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":510,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10590,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions\/10590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}