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Blogs, featured poems, news and events, issues, and submission calls.
IN THE RIALTO
Tristia by Jacqueline Saphra
Tristia by Jacqueline Saphra My friend, we’ve been anchored here for years arguing the toss: semi-colon versus the long dash, our views on Ovid’s Tristia though I haven’t read it, nor have you - and as the room rocks gently underneath us you pour for me a rare tea...
The Booze by Charlie Bird
THE BOOZE by now, the booze is you, you are the booze, mid-rant you stand up too fast, keel over, turn your ankle and I'm supposed to help you up. Oh! the heat and stench of you cursing the world, cursing me, you burst into tears, blurt, 'I'm hurt', that is:...
A challenge and response
In your editorial to Rialto 84 you challenged your readers to challenge you and Fiona. Taking you at your word, here’s my challenge.
Your Editorial vaunts the magazine’s eclecticism. What struck me however was not the wide ranging diversity of the poems in this issue…
A VISION FOR THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FUTURE OF EAST ANGLIA by Matt Haw
Michael and I had a moment of mild mutual surprise: I said I’d blog about this poem and he said he’d mentioned it in his draft newsletter. Turns out we are both fans of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker…
Sanctuary by Kate White
I admire the way this poem dances between the worlds of the medieval anchoress and the modern urban landscape ( I think this phone box is historically a bit earlier than now, sometime before we all got hold of mobile phones). I like the playful contrasts between the language of ‘epiphany’ and ‘anointed’ and that of the ‘closed off-licence’ and the lack of sex workers ‘cards’…
Julie’s boat is in the field behind my house by Judith Willson
his is such a rich poem – only sixteen lines but look where it takes you. Maybe I should qualify that and say look where it takes me. What the reader brings to the poem is a significant factor. Anyway I’m right in there at the start with the linen line.
News
THE RIALTO OPEN PAMPHLET COMPETITION 2020 RESULTS
REPORT FROM THE JUDGE, WILL HARRIS I feel uncomfortable with the idea of “judging” because it can suggest some kind of special objectivity and wisdom on the part of the judge. And my only qualification for this role is that I love poems, subjectively and with very...
Pamphlet competition shortlist announced
We are very pleased to announce that the Shortlisted Titles for the 2020 Rialto Pamphlet Competition are, in no particular order, For The Apocalypse Team, Trombone, Hello, Before After, Queerfella, Fridges, Shit Happens, The Sushi Chef’s Wife, The Presence of Absence,...
Nature and Place 2020 winners announced
We have now received the results of the Nature and Place Poetry Competition back from Pascale Petit and are delighted to announce that the winners are: 1st Prize of £1000 – ‘Hermit Crab in a Doll’s Head’ by Cindy Botha 2nd Prize of £500 – ‘Insects’ by P Q R Anderson...
BLOGS
A Day At Wicken Fen
It was a great privilege to spend a day at Wicken Fen, near Ely, in the company of Professor Nick Davies, who has grown to love this undrained, species-rich Fen after studying it daily for more than 30 years. Nick is an expert on the behaviour of cuckoos and how they...
On ‘Lady Stardust’
When commissioning pieces for the original Bowieoke event, I decided to give the other poets their pick of Bowie albums to write on, and to choose my own from among those left. It came as a welcome surprise that 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the...
Cold Fire – The Bowie launch event
We don't tend to often get decent photos of launches, however Jon Stone took a fair few really good shots including some of the Bowie-oke. and we thought it might be nice to share some of them. We've tried to find one of everybody from the pictures we have, apologies...
The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2016: results
We are delighted to announce that Sean Wai Keung has won The Rialto’s first Open Pamphlet Competition. Hannah Lowe, our judge, says: “I loved these poems for their simultaneous sense of puzzlement and wisdom about the world, and specifically the things Sean Wai Keung...
Guest Blog: On Tŷ Newydd – Breda Wall Ryan
‘Our latest blog is by Breda Wall Ryan who was a prize winner in the 2013 Nature Poetry competition. Breda writes of her experience on the week-long course generously donated by Tŷ Newydd’. Naturally I was thrilled when my poem ‘The Inkling’ was awarded third place in...
Nature and Place
We have had a few anxious emails asking what exactly we are looking for in entries for this competition, (apart, of course, from poems that reach out and intoxicate the reader). I'm going to try to answer this, but unfortunately, for those of you who like clear and...
About the rialto
WELCOME
Welcome to the website for The Rialto, where you can find out who we are and what we do, read poems from the magazine, and connect up with our social media pages. You can buy subscriptions, single copies, pamphlets and books. You can learn how to submit your poetry for possible publication, and you can read articles and blogs by the editors, poets and guest writers.
The Rialto magazine is edited by Michael Mackmin working with Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Will Harris and Degna Stone, who are graduates of our Editor Development Programme.
We’d like to say thank you to our loyal subscribers and to the Arts Council of England whose support and encouragement over years have made possible The Rialto. We invite you, reader, to join the team: help make poetry happen by subscribing now.
THE MAGAZINE
The founding editors, Michael among them, believed in a ‘Republic of Poetry’, an inclusive and diverse world of poetry, one that was open to experiment in form and content. We strive to keep this vision alive.
The magazine appears three times a year and each issue, with its spacious A4 pages, has fifty or so poems, an editorial and occasional, commissioned, prose pieces. Most of the space is occupied by the best new poems we can find, all wrapped up in our famously vibrant beautiful covers.
The Rialto has been called ‘Simply the best’ by Carol Ann Duffy and ‘A terrific magazine’ by Seamus Heaney.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS
At the start of the new millennium The Rialto published a short run of first collections. In 2005 we turned our energy to publishing pamphlets and began our Bridge Pamphlets list. These have so far been by poets who we’ve asked to submit work. We also run a poetry pamphlet competition which has become a fixture of how we discover new work. Oh, and we haven’t forgotten about first collections – we launched Dean Parkin’s The Swan Machine at last autumn’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, and published Matt Howard’s award winning Gall in 2018.
Laura Scott’s pamphlet What I Saw won the Michael Marks Award in 2014, and several of our first collections are winners of major awards.
“The Rialto is the poetry magazine to read – publishing poems that are formally inventive and alive to the ‘here and now’ of the world, but always with a commitment to the humane and compassionate qualities I believe the best poetry has. It has led the way in nurturing new talent.”
“The magazine is consistently one of, if not the best spotter of emerging talent in the UK – as a writer you know that you have arrived if one of your poems goes in. It’s more than an imprimatur of quality – it’s a rite of passage.”
