LIBBON describes itself as “The UK’s Newest Short Story Magazine.” The magazine is A4 sized and is printed on good quality paper, with clear text and small illustrations accompanying the prose. The first issue, Summer 2005, appears to be made up of competition winners, and this seems to be the magazine’s selection method. The next competition deadline is 31st October 2005. As for the ten stories themselves, none of them are particularly memorable, and this is perhaps a magazine closer to entry level, but it’s still only the first issue, so there’s plenty of scope for development. ‘Seeing Mum Out’ by Carolyn Lewis is worth a mention. It contains the kind of mother/grandmother character many people will recognise. ‘Pork’ by Chris Amies meanwhile is more darkly humorous. Other writers in the magazine are DF Berry-Hart, Peter Stockwell, Damien Kelly, Mary Jennifer Payne, Robert Orton, Charles H Pearson, Andrew Michael Hurley and Kaaryn Lei. Perhaps with a bit of time and publicity, future competitions will see a wider range of writing, but it’s always great to see a new short fiction magazine, and Libbon’s production values are good.

LITTORAL: Nature and the Spirit is a “multi-faith and environmental literary magazine devoted to the principle of unity in diversity.” Littoral is a poetry and non-fiction prose magazine, with some artwork included. It’s A5 in size, with a glossy cover and good paper. The Summer Solstice 2005 issue, which is only issue two, includes a profile/interview with poet Mary Blake (and two of her poems), and a non-fiction piece on wind farms. There’s a letters page, with £5 awarded to the Star Letter in each issue. Nature really does play a big part in the poetry and prose, and although this unites the works thematically, it can also work against them when there’s too much similarity. But poems that stayed in the mind afterwards included Dubravka Velasevic’s ‘I refuse’, Jacqueline Karp’s ‘Caraway’, ‘Secrets’ by Calvin Green, and Tracy Patrick’s ‘Windy Hill’. What these poems have in common is a personal reaction to the natural world, rather than a disengaged description. But ‘Old Track’ by Dave Morgan is an example of a well-written more descriptive piece. In fact, there are a number of other poems worth checking out, and the magazine is recommended for anyone interested in either nature or spiritual poetry. As the editor points out at the beginning of the magazine, Littoral is not looking for propaganda or protest pieces, though they are looking for more non-fiction submissions. Artwork in the magazine is black and white illustration or photograph.

IRONSTONE on the other hand, is not so much a magazine as a “celebration of new writing from West Lothian” edited by the Writer in Residence there, Magi Gibson. Prose and poetry are represented here. Margaret White’s story, ‘Locked In the Cellar’ gets off to a good start and then stops suddenly just before it reaches what would have been its dramatic conclusion. ‘Alone’ by Deborah Lynn Clelland, is a ghost story, while ‘Vodka on the Rocks’ by Fiona Thackeray is written from the point of view of a somewhat jaded mermaid. Gail M Whyte’s ‘Winter’ throws in a spot of revenge, just when the reader is wondering why the female narrator lets her husband make so many decisions for her. Poetry-wise, the ones worth picking out are Dennis O’Donnell’s ‘Feeding the Ducks at Linlithgow Loch’, and ‘The Callanish Chessmen’ by Donnie MacNeill. My favourite, though, is ‘Waiting’ by Elizabeth Boyle, which has a beautiful simplicity and eschews some of the over writing of the longer poems in the magazine/collection.

E1 is described as “Journalism, poetry, photography, reviews and pit yakka by the young people of East Durham”. Produced on glossy paper, the anthology is square shaped, and packed full of poetry, prose, and lovely colour photographs. Many young writers and artists appear in this magazine. The writing itself is often gritty and located very much in the real world of teenage culture and everyday concerns including teen pregnancy, self-harming and bulimia (‘A Day in the Life of a Teenager’ by Eve Cullen, Lisa Marley and Emma Davies). Charvas/chavas get a few mentions, in ways that suggest the writers themselves don’t identify with them. Politics isn’t very far either, Michael Portillo turns up in one poem (‘Bullet’ by Ruth Walton), while George Bush and the Gulf War are addressed in a prose piece, ‘Global Chimp’ by Adam Turns. Two girls murdered in Soham also get a passing mention in ‘Hardy Street’ by Rebecca Ford. ‘Precious’ by Matthew Humphries reflects on how precious life is while thinking of the Madrid bombings. In Lee Gray’s ‘Foetal’ the narrator sees someone being attacked but is afraid to step in. The world these young people inhabit is humorous, gritty, but also dark. There are nature poems, and pieces that address the urban environment in imaginative ways. Some writers have located their work in a foreign environment, within the context of a holiday. Cally Huitson’s ‘Espagnol’ and ‘Dumbo Ears’ by Adam Fishwick are set in Spain and Florida. Michelle Clark, meanwhile, gives us ‘The Truth about Boys’ while Chris Hutchinson tells us about ‘Boys and their Cars’ and how to give your car a makeover. ‘From a Cliff’ by Lisa Booth seems to be a description of looking out to sea, but it turns darker when the narrator notes that there’s a woman in trouble in the water, “Gob wide open like an opera singer…” Things turn even darker in Jenny Stephenson’s ‘All Together Now’ where a young girl commits suicide. All the writers and contributors in E1 are to be credited, even if I didn’t have space to name them all here, and the collection is worth looking at for its production values. Much of the photography that appears focuses on the urban environment, but there’s other photos too, and the contributors themselves are pictured in the inside back pages, individually or in workshops.