Editor Interview: Pennine Platform

Crafted, resonant poems.

The North, PNReview, Poetry Review, Butcher’s Dog, The Frogmore Papers, Valley Press, Nine Arches, Under the Radar, Calder Valley Press... so many to learn from and admire.

Whoever’s in the latest issue! Beyond that it's not for an editor to have favourites.

The variety of work we publish, to consistent and exacting standards. We respect our would-be contributors’ good faith and offer feedback to show our choices are not whimsical or arbitrary. Our concerns are practical and contextual as well as intrinsic: poems need to optimise the A5 page, we have no more or less than 60 pages and each issue has to cohere. They also have to do their author and fellow authors full justice in the longer-term.

Send us your best work. If we feel it’s just a few tweaks short we’ll say so; feedback and/or rejection may mean its best form and publisher are to come.
But also remember there isn’t always a quick fix: the 'back burner' is a great editor.

Short modest covering letter, poem titles listed, each poem single-spaced and optimising an A5 page, every line delivering something, no typos. Someone who’s clearly read the magazine and guidelines. That’s always a good start.

Sending at or after the end of the month. It’s an iterative process - we don’t leave it to the last minute. Much as we like engaging with poetics, we have all on to read and respond to each poem once, so can’t accept re-writes either, unless expressly requested. Use the feedback to try elsewhere.

A cover letter is a courtesy. We work unpaid as editors and don’t like to feel our efforts are taken for granted. Brevity is also courteous. While we accept some writers’ need to savour their successes, we’re much more interested in the poems.

We publish poems, and we read every single mark on the page.

I have a bank of very experienced poets I can call on for a second opinion - but the hurdles listed above are usually rigorous enough.

You can find a full account on the website in the editorials for Issues 95 and 96, with part 3 to come in Issue 97. All-told it’s intensive, exhausting, relentless, and mind-boggling but ultimately - eight weeks on - satisfying.

It depends: many poems are published exactly as they come, but we do all the above on occasions to varying degrees, and always with the author’s final approval.

We haven’t yet - haven’t had time - but don’t rule it out. Not always entirely convinced by the awards system either (see Issue 89 editorial).
Meanwhile I know our poets see publication in a beautiful print magazine as its own reward.