The newest issue of Bath Magg is out now and I’m very proud to be a part of it. My new poem, “the one with a bike and a lazy caesura,” appears alongside truly excellent work from poets I admire. I was already a big fan of Alycia Pirmohamed‘s work (and can’t wait for her new full-length, Another Way to Split Water, to arrive in the post in the next few days), and her poem in the issue, “I Ask the Garden,” is a gorgeous work of prosopoeia (recounted or even deferred, maybe) that resonates with me. I also really love “Chiaroscuro,” from a poet whose work I didn’t know before, Isabelle Baafi, and not only for its caesura.
There are plenty of other great poets in this tenth issue, though it’s also really worth checking out back issues as well. I recently discovered Yanita Georgieva’s poem, “Posh Salad,” in Issue 9 and I don’t know how to describe this really specific feeling it gives me. It’s as if I’m laughing from the gut while also feeling a terror starting to expand somewhere in my diaphragm.
Altogether, Bath Magg is a really excellent journal, and I really think they are an example of a kind of transatlantic field of anglophone poetry that has been growing up in the age of hip online literary reviews and renewed indie publishing. For me, it fits a thesis put forward by Cole Swensen and David St. John in their anthology, American Hybrid (recommended to me by Eduardo Corral), about the contemporary breakdown of divisions between avante garde and so-called mainstream poetry, though it also manages to escape national boundaries (in ways I believe Cole understands much better than I do).
I do hope you’ll check out the issue and the magazine in general. I’d like to make a special note of gratitude to editor Joe Carrick-Varty, who accepted my poem with suggestions for revision. The draft of the poem I submitted was several lines longer, and definitely lost some of its energy as it kind of petered out. Joe had the vision to end the poem where it does now, and I think it is much better for it. It’s always a pleasure to have a gifted editor to work with, and I’m grateful to him for helping bring something better out of my earlier draft.
Also, for anyone who noticed where the naming of my poem comes from, trust me that it’s not unintentional! In my series of poems that uses this titling convention, it gets quite explicit at points. But that’ll have to wait for future publications. Or the reunion show.