Put your eds together

I keep reading how literary journals aren't a great moneymaking venture; further denting the resolve of writers hoping to make a living from their work. Yet at Overland we see, in addition to editor Jacinda Woodhead, a consulting editor, a fiction editor, a poetry editor, a deputy editor, contributing editors, a contributing fiction editor, editorial intern, 32 editorial assistants fiction, 18 editorial assistants poetry in addition to staff performing other functions and the Board.

Southerly, which is thicker than Overland in the copies I have, has an Editor and Special Editor plus an editor for that issue's tribute to a departing editor, an Associate Editor, Poetry Editor, fiction and poetry readers, Reviews Editors, 9 Editorial Advisers, and the usual complement.

Meanjin has an editor, deputy editor, fiction editor, poetry critic, copy editor and proofreader (the same person) and an editorial advisory board of eight members, quite well known.

You could read this section at the front that people don't read as a sign of just how much work is being submitted and what a thriving industry it is. It just does beg the question that, if you have seven senior staff and fifty plus other assistants to pay, the scale as to what is profitable is relative. I know nothing I've done could pay that many people, leaving aside the double duties or unpaid contributions wherever they occur.

Edit ed. Edit TED. Edit ion. Edit or

Trust Going Down Swinging to highlight the roadblocks editors represent. I don't doubt the Australian poetry community is political.

Here's another free poem, only, instead of taking one home this is giving one away

A free poem wot I rote

Verse that veers off course of course

tears that tore off more remorse

blotches and splotches in bleak despatches

the state of me next to a statesman's statue

Reams of rhymes it teems at times

then there's a tunnel to funnel this line

gamble that you won't stumble

if anyone has a handle on humble

this stanza good one to take

Patron eyes

While some websites claiming to be literary journals invite us to be patrons, this honour is normally reserved for such illustrious figures as Barry Jones and Chris Wallace-Crabbe.

Take things literally

Nobody is saying that CopperNickel, with its serendipitous appearance here, can be compared with a journal pitched to the actual Customer Zone Technician II
while he is up his ladder

It seems from our readings that the literary journal can be all things to all people. Well all artsy people leastwise.

From a writer's perspective, I want to know if publication pays or leads to a paying job in the field.

Or am I just saying this because I missed the great free poetry ebook download day? Why was I frantically, if unsuccessfully, assembling a book with the correct layout, converting it to a PDF if success had meant that potentially lots of people could download my stuff on their iPhones for free?

But if you take the scrooge scribbler approach, you wouldn't have a blog or publish stuff on social media. Or you'd have judicious and pushy samples.
 
Funnily enough, one of the literary journals did have a piece about poems being sold in the street and what happens to them. A poem you've bought telling you about poems whose sale is less certain.

A free poem

I found a poem and took it home

it traced the trees and nudged a gnome

it flowed into the middle of their ode

slid on a lid as the traffic slowed

grazed the grass no blade surpassed

dogged a dog and caught a cat

whisked risk onto the welcome mat

MAGA zine

Given that the first literary journal was published in 1663, the year that an anonymous drama with the wordy, if not worthy, title of The Wandering Whores' Complaint for Want of Trading was published and Moliere released his La Critique de l'école des femmes, it would be fair to also canvass the appearance of magazines in books. That is, if we hadn't said nothing but dust jacket a couple of posts ago.
Opinions as to the worst literary magazine are unfair to n+1 if I don't know what n+1 are saying.

The School Magazine is the longest running literary magazine, turning a hundred in 2015.

NewPages mentions that Little Star is nearly four hundred pages long.

It's of little import whether John Spencer was producing work at the time the literary magazine made its first appearance since it is now clear that these publications publish poetry and short stories themselves and need not allude to books, or can mention them in passing.
Though who can say what the ripple effect is at any one time?

mags, well, lit.

• A Public Space
• Able Muse
• Antioch Review
• Atlantic Monthly 
• BOMB
• Commentary 
• The Common
• Commonweal
• Conjunctions
• Consequence
• Copper Nickel 
• Daily Lit
• Fifth Wednesday Journal
• Five Points
• Glimmer Train
• Granta
• Guernica
• Gulf Coast
• Harper's Magazine
• The Kenyon Review
• The Literarian
• Lunch Ticket
• Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern
• Meridian
• New Letters
• The New Yorker
• One Story
• Paris Review
• Ploughshares
• Poetry
• Shenandoah
• Tin House
• Zoetrope All-Story
• ZYZZYVA

This barely scratches the surface. John Wood has a reasonable ranking system for literary journals. 

Litter erie

When we looked at magazines and journals in April 2015 we started off telling you about the German literary and philosophy magazine that made its first appearance in 1663. Despite this, and my own interest and involvement in things literary, we quickly moved on to talk about other glossies.

The truth is I've never subscribed to a literary magazine and this is what my business advisor a year later and the editor he sent me to both recommended. If you want to get published in the literary mags, taking out a subscription is a good start.

One of the birthday presents I asked for this year was thus one of the Aus standards and, since that gift of a year's sub to Outland*, copies of Meanjin and Southerly have also appeared for me to glance through.
I'm still trying to digest the poetry I have read and, as predicted, it's not to my taste really and speaks more to those obstacles I'm up against. That said, it helps to know the scene.
*this should read Overland

Australian literary magazines

• The Antipodean
• Arna
• Australian Book Review
• The Australian Horror and Fantasy Magazine
• Australian Literary Review
• Australian Literary Studies
• The Australian Poetry Journal
• Bloodsongs
• The Book Fellow
• Books+Publishing
• Cordite Poetry Review 
• The Critic
• The Gadfly
• Gangway
• Good Reading
• Griffith Review
• Harvest Magazine
• HEAT
• Hermes
• HorrorScope
• Island
• Jacket 
• Kill Your Darlings
• The Lifted Brow
• The Lone Hand
• Mascara
• Meanjin
• Meuse Press
• The Monthly
• Nocturnal Submissions
• Overland
• Peril
• Pertinent
• Quadrant
• Red Leaves
• Review of Reviews
• Right Now
• School Magazine
• Scripsi
• Seizure
• Shadowed Realms
• Shit Creek Review
• Southerly
• Sydney Review of Books
• Victorian Review
• Voiceworks
• Westerly
• Wet Ink

Verse versus voices, vices, vistas visited

I hadn't thought to include the relationship between songs and poetry because song lyrics are often verse with music put to it/verses with music put to them. But the opinion as to who among the songwriters and singers is legitimately a poet, varies.

Lauren Martin's piece in Elite Daily is right to include Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan, wiggle wiggling aside. The case isn't as certain with the samples used to demonstrate the chops of Neil Young or Kanye West and, while I agree with the choice of Johnny Cash, the lyrics quoted are by Trent Reznor. Kurt Cobain? The words suit the songs and the whole grunge ethos but I wouldn't call him a poet necessarily. At least not without having to let countless other songwriters into the fold first.

I don't even know whether to credit Elvis Costello as a poet or just a very clever lyricist. I do know that no list should be without Leonard Cohen who of course started life as a poet, acclaimed in his native Canada. I'd also insist on Tom Waits being there. Mark E Smith too strange to categorise beyond John Peel's "The Fall - always different, always the same"

We could add in her Bob Marley so reggae has its spokesman and that way we can sneak in Jello Biafra for punk despite my love for the other DKs and the sound they produced.

Let's round out with Paul Simon for folk, knowing full well that the task is too massive; just as we said at the beginning.