Salt Publishing

The Art of the Dinner Party

I went to a dinner party last night at the artist Colin Dick's house in Coventry, whose work is featured in the first issue of Horizon Review. I was there with my husband, Steven Haynes, and two other guests, the artist and critic Richard Yeomans and his wife Anne.

Delia, Colin's wife, showed us round their charming home, the walls of which are covered with Colin's paintings and sketches. A wonderful house, every room we saw was packed with poetry, literary fiction, art books, notebooks of poems and sketches. There are also shelves groaning with archived portfolios of paintings and sketches that Colin has produced over six prolific decades. It was too dark to take a trip down the garden to his studio, but perhaps we'll be able to see that on a future visit.

We discussed the first issue of Horizon at great length, and Colin was dismayed to discover that Mark Williams' translation of the 'recently discovered Fifth Branch of the Mabinogi' is an elaborate, scholarly hoax. He was so excited by the story, he had already begun making preliminary sketches for paintings to accompany the work!

However, he did present me with some beautiful new poems for the next issue, and a number of books which he knew would interest me personally, such as an Exeter University edition of Guy of Warwick's adventures, a medieval tall tale in which the brave Sir Guy defends the moorland area of Dunchurch in Warwickshire - near where we are currently living - from a vast, rampaging cow!

I'm still looking for features on artists for the next few issues, plus reviews of literary fiction.

And if anything in the first issue moves you to write to Horizon Review, there will be a "Letters" page in each issue from now on.

So don't be shy - check the submissions page for details, and get in touch!

tags: reviews, letters to the editor, art, artists, first issue,

Horizon Review Is Born

As of early this afternoon, Horizon Review lives!

There are some fine things in this first issue, and I very much hope all our new Horizon readers will enjoy getting thoroughly acquainted with the contents list. There are both new and established writers on show here, and all of them with original and well-written work to explore, admire and devour, including poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, articles on writing and publishing, etc.

There were a few hiccups during the transfer of files, but those are being sorted even as I type this. The good thing is that I can now see how it should be done next time.

Note to self: don't leave everything to the last minute, Jane, and expect the transfer to take a single day. It doesn't take a day. It takes three, and that's at a relentless pace. So next time, start sooner and expect anything!

A Strange, Shining Flotilla ...

I have just finished - collapsed with relief, actually - emailing over to Salt the strange, shining flotilla of files which was Horizon Review Issue One in embryo. Over the past few days, the files have been sent out into cyberspace one by one, at intervals or in quick succession, strapped to each other for comfort like drowning sailors to rafts.

For nearly a week now, preparing for this moment, I've barely slept, I've snatched meals on the run, I've shooed children from the room, I've said 'N'yet' to favourite television programmes, invitations from friends, the allure of enticing emails in the in-box, and even had to refuse a phone chat with one of my regular gossip-mongers this morning - now that hurt!

And all the files have arrived safely, and Chris has begun the Great Upload.

I can't say when Horizon will be live and ready to view. All out of my hands now. Soon though, very soon.

But the whole process of putting together this first issue - from discussing the original concept with Chris through to delivery of the last few files a few hours ago - has been by turns exhausting and stressful and exhilarating and magnificent.

Although the poetry, short fiction, reviews and articles may take a little longer to appear, my Editorial for the first ever Horizon Review is already viewable here. I imagine the rest of the magazine will not be far behind.

And after a decent interval for sleep, food, and maybe writing something of my own for a change, I can turn my mind hazily to the next issue.

These are the marvellous, sunny uplands of an issue, the first few days after the last one has been cut loose, when everything ahead is still in a deliciously unformed state of potential and no one has yet said 'No thanks' to an invitation to submit or emailed over a file so outsized it's crashed my computer in the middle of some sensitive procedure.

It's been quite a journey, quite an odyssey, these past few months as a literary editor again. Where next?

Colin Dick: a 'regional' painter with an eye for carnival

Colin Dick's "Carnaval at Dunkirk"
Reproduced with kind permission of the artist

I'm delighted to announce that the first issue of Horizon Review - due to be launched online next month - will feature an in-depth article by artist and critic Richard Yeomans on the life and work of Colin Dick, a contemporary 'regional' painter and poet from Coventry.

Colin Dick's powerful and dynamic paintings and sketches not only reflect almost half a century of change in the old city centre of Coventry, but also touch on the lives and customs of travellers and other marginalised groups in modern society. His interest in folk tradition has increasingly led him to capture carnivalesque scenes from local festivals and activities such as the Molly Dance and the Mop Fair at Warwick.

Later work, such as the "Carnaval at Dunkirk" (sic) painting above, looks further afield with what Yeomans describes as 'haunting and striking images' of the annual carnival at Dunkirk.

Colin Dick is also a poet, and you can find a photograph of Colin Dick on the Heaventree Press site, reading his poetry in May 2007 at the First Coventry Festival of Literature and Liberty.

China Miéville interviewed in Horizon Review

First Issue of Horizon Review due out in September!




If you're into all things literary, you're going to love this first issue of Horizon Review. It's bursting with exciting new poems and short fiction, plus numerous articles, reviews, literary translations, art critiques.

China Miéville in the interview suite
Plus, there's an absolutely cracking in-depth interview with internationally acclaimed author, China Miéville, discussing his influences as a writer, his books to date, and his most recent projects.

Reading Break
Meanwhile, if you're hoping to send work for Issue Two, please note that I will not be reading any new submissions now until October.

Watch the Horizon pages for further updates!

Submission Reading Break

Good news for those keenly awaiting our new Salt arts magazine ...

The first issue of Horizon is now 'full' and will be launched from this site in mid-September!

Stemming the Tide
Meanwhile, in order to fulfill my own obligations as a writer, I will be taking a break from reading new submissions of work until October.

This is how it should work. Once I've looked at the last few submissions currently stacked up in my inbox, I'll be sending out a standard message in response to new email submissions so that would-be contributors can choose either to wait until I'm ready to look at their work or to withdraw their submission and re-submit in the autumn.

Chris and Jen are on their summer break at the moment, but as soon as they're back in the office, I'll get something posted up on the main Horizon Review submissions page to let writers know when to start submitting work again.

Summer Holidays

Yes, it's that time of year again when editors take a well-earned rest from their inboxes and head off into the wilderness, armed only with an MP3 player and a bottle of Factor 30 suncream.

So how does this impact on you?

As far as submissions to the magazine are concerned, I will be away from my desk from Friday 18th July until 1st August. Any email submissions received within that time span may have to wait slightly longer than the usual 30-day turnaround, though I will be working hard to clear the backlog on my return. For personal messages and other business connected to Horizon Review, please expect a reply by mid-August.

I will also be unavailable during the last week of August, when I'll be safely tucked away on a writing retreat in Devon.

I hope you all manage to grab some downtime this summer as well, and look forward to reading any new submissions on my return.


tags: holiday,

Breaking the Line

I've been in discussion recently with a young poet re his poetry submission to Horizon. I thought some of his line-breaks needed to be reassessed. He disagreed. After sitting down with a print-out of his poems and taking the time to read them, slowly, aloud - these are not short poems! - I began to come round to his way of thinking.

Having been in poetry over ten years now, both as an editor and as a poet myself, I'm used to meeting head-on the preciousness and self-indulgence of poets whose work is being edited or rejected. And maybe because I'm reconsidering for myself, as a poet, the role and importance of the line-break, such questions are at the forefront of my mind right now. Basically, I felt some of the breaks were visually clumsy, that they stood out on the page, eye-catching mistakes, that he had broken too often on 'off-beat' words like 'of' or 'the'. Yet at the same time I was struck enough by the various arguments put forward by this young poet to want to find out if he was right ... to test his theories against the sound of the poetry itself.

And listening to his poems properly, experiencing the flow and balance of them, I found it hard to see how else to break the line except where he had already broken it. So I'm going to take a chance on these particular pieces, even though I'm still not entirely convinced by the 'look' of them on the page. Because an important part of running a literary magazine is remaining open to work which is different or which challenges your own preconceptions about what you like as an editor.

I suppose the key word here is risk.

We take risks, both as writers and editors, in order to test and push beyond the boundaries we put up to protect ourselves against things that are 'different'. Sometimes a risk succeeds magnificently. Sometimes it falls flat on its face, and so do we. Not being quite sure which it will be until the very last moment is disconcerting ... but also part of the fun.



tags: editing, poetry, line-breaks

Art on the Horizon

I was at an event in Coventry last night - "Night Blue Fruit", a monthly poetry evening at the Liquid Cafe Bar in the City Arcade - and got talking to a few people about art in the West Midlands.




It was a revelation to me to discover how many artists could be found at a poetry event, and how varied their work was. You might imagine poets would be the only breed to frequent an open mic on a quiet Thursday in Coventry. But in fact the division between poets and those who work in other artistic mediums can be astonishingly thin, one almost bleeding into the other.

During the evening, I spoke to one painter and sketch artist who had been writing poems for more than six decades, and a photographer and collector of 'found' items for exhibition who writes poems specifically to accompany his work.

"Night Blue Fruit" was indeed a fruitful venue - and the party atmosphere was terrific as always! - which has left me on the trail of several local artists for possible inclusion in the first and subsequent issues of Horizon Review.

But the internet knows no local boundaries. Are you an artist? Do you work with materials and/or photography? Would you like your work to be considered for HR?

Wherever you are in the world, send art and literature submission queries - with a few samples, preferably, and a 75 word biog. - by email to submissions-horizon@saltpublishing.com




tags: art, call for submissions, photography,

Small World, Poetry

Less than a week since Horizon Review went live, and the submissions have already started flooding in. Thanks to all those who've sent work; I'll get back to you in order, as soon as I've had a chance to sit down and read through your work with proper attention. Which means sending out for pizza and letting the housework slide ... yet again!

Some of you may be wondering how I first got involved with Salt Publishing. Well, very briefly, I 'met' Chris Hamilton-Emery, editor at Salt, online a few years ago - in a poetry forum, unsurprisingly. I discovered that he was also Chris Emery, whose poetry I had published many years before in my own little magazine called Blade. Which just goes to show what a small word British poetry is. And even smaller now, with the advent of the internet.

Later, we got chatting via email. I trundled off to Cambridge to meet the man himself and Jen, his wife and co-director at Salt, and less than a year later a book was born out of that meeting: Boudicca & Co.



Now I'm editing Horizon Review, one of a number of free online magazines associated with Salt Publishing - more on their way!

So when your partner or spouse starts complaining that 'you spend too much time online', you can point out to them that it's an excellent way for writers like yourself to meet other people in the business. It's also great fun. Everyone seems to be online these days, messing about on the literary blogs and message boards, from complete newbies to well-known authors; even if their pseudonyms - PinkRabbit123, for instance, or SlamDunk - do rather too good a job at times of concealing their true identities!


tags: Chris Hamilton-Emery, Jen Hamilton-Emery, internet, Blade