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Michael Mackmin Interview


The Rialto poetry magazine

Michael Mackmin is the editor of The Rialto, the poetry magazine, described by Carol Ann Duffy as ‘simply the best’. Simon Armitage says of it ; ‘The only magazine I can think of that truly gives poetry the time and space it deserves.’ Michael Mackmin was born in 1941 in Croydon. He studied at Exeter and Leeds universities and was, briefly, a lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle on Tyne.

I moved to Norfolk in 1969 and attempted self-sufficiency on an acre of garden, worked as a teacher- in further education, in a private preparatory school, local secondary school, and EFL summer schools. I’ve also worked as a shop assistant, cleaned pine furniture, co run a Free School, drove vans, moved pianos, washed recycled bottles in a wholefood co-op, washed up in a vegetarian café, spent half a winter harvesting organic leeks, ran an antiques and junkshop. I retrained as a Gestalt psychotherapist and counsellor. I’ve spent 20 years doing this, including ten years running groups in a drug and alcohol rehab. I started The Rialto in 1984 with John Wakeman and Jenny Roberts; I am now the magazine’s sole editor, but have a marketing assistant, Dean Parkin.

I first learned poems by heart as a child and was totally converted to poetry age 12 by hearing ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ read aloud by a brilliant English teacher.

My collection The Play of Rainbow was published by Cape Goliard in 1970; I still have poems published in magazines from time to time.

I don’t have a writing routine- you’ve got to be joking. When I’m not working I’m editing the Rialto and when I’m not doing that I’m walking about bird watching and looking for God, so my poems have to squeeze themselves in when they can.

Favourite poets; Shakespeare, John Berryman, W B Yeats, Basil Bunting, Ed Dorn, Vaughan, etc etc. Tennyson is often brilliant. Why? Because they can all create astonished rapture in the reader.

I get excited by reading work that has ... sign up to WriteWords to read more

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