@julianday
Published by Blackbough Poetry, The Storms Journal, FolkHeart Press. Featured writer in Patricia's Pen, and on A Thousand Shades Of Green podcast and a regular guest reader on Eat The Storms podcast. Best of The Net nominated.
In our new bi-monthly feature, Magma Editors share their reflections on current art taking place across the UK.
First up, @lisadmkelly.bsky.social on Tracey Emin's exhibition: A Second Life
magmapoetry.com/poetry-and-a...
A poster for the Free Verse Poetry Prize. The left half of the image is green with black text, and the right half of the image is black with white text. In the top left hand corner is a yellow circle featuring the words 'Less than two weeks to enter!' Beneath this are the words Free Verse, positioned vertically against each other. Beneath this are the words 'Poetry Book & Magazine Fair'. The text on the right hand side of the image reads 'Now Open, Free Verse Prize 2026, First Prize £500 plus publication in Poetry News and book fair programme. Judged by Nina Mingya Powles. Competition closes midnight 6 March 2026. Visit the poetrysociety.submittable.come/submit'
There are less than two weeks left submit to the Free Verse Poetry Prize, closing at midnight on the 6th March. Send us your poems on any theme for a chance to win £500 and publication in Poetry News. Head to our bio and send in your poems!
Its going to be a great festival this year! For all the details, tickets and workshops go to our website www.munsterlit.ie
#corkevents #festival #poetryfestival
Even the rain couldn’t put a dampener on the love in the room at our launch of Poetry Ireland Review Issue 147, Love Poems to Humans, edited by Theo Dorgan. 🌧️
PIR 147 is available to buy on our website now. ❤️
Come along to Women in Revival, an event in Kinsale to celebrate International Women’s Day in poetry. Readings from Anne Rath, Fiona Smith and Bernadette Gallagher.
📆7th March
🕢3:00 pm
📌Kinsale Library, Kerry
🎫Free
🔗See details: www.poetryireland.ie/whats-on/wom...
You're welcome!
Best wishes for today's launch, Sarah! ✨️✨️
Congratulations, Catherine! 👏👏🥳🎉
They’ve arrived! 🎉🎉🎉
Poem The Rainmakers by Francis Harvey
Francis Harvey meditates on hope, futility, and the human impulse to intervene in forces beyond our control.
The act of calling down rain becomes something larger than weather. It’s about standing beneath an empty sky and refusing despair.
#poetry
#poemoftheday
Flash Fiction
£1,000 first prize.
Up to 250 words. No minimum.
Selected writers published in our anthology.
Open to writers worldwide.
What can you say in 250 words?
Enter now → bridportprize.org.uk
#BridportPrize #FlashFiction #WritingCompetition #WritersCommunity #AmWriting
💞🫠
Congratulations to Michael Laskey, who's won the King's Gold Medal for Poetry. Here's a link to the essay I wrote on his work for The Friday Poem...
thefridaypoem.com/michael-lask...
Thank you, Julia, yes, and being on five prescribed painkillers says a lot, too, about the acuity. Unfortunately that brings its own mixed bag of side-effect delights! Yes, I'm trying to self-care as much as I can. But this week has been so hard to deal with. I've been v demoralised.
Huge congratulations, Jenny!! 👏💫👏
Front cover of book is an abstract painting of ocean blue paint over white canvas. The title is in blocky font with pale navy blue letters. JENNY WONG LIGHT CHEMICAL SEA STORIES & SMALL FICTIONS
Back cover of book with the following blurbs: "Quiet, contemplative, transformative, Light Chemical Sea, will send you on a meditative journey through wavelengths of sound, of light, of love, of loss, on pathways of auroras, of highways, of elements, of life. Jenny Wong's singular voice will whisper, will call, will summon you to be present in the warp and weft of her words." -MELISSA LLANES BROWNLEE, AUTHOR OF BITTER OVER SWEET "Jenny Wong is an alchemist turning moments of being into illumination of character. Wong is drawn to those on the periphery, people who don't quite fit in. In small flashes of brilliance she highlights the elements of their lives as they find solace in nature or catch glimpses of their true selves." -DEBBIE ROBSON, AUTHOR OF A GLIMPSE AND THE HERMITAGE "The obscure and almost-absurd become visible and believable under the skillful care of writer Jenny Wong in the compelling Light Chemical Sea, a collection of stories and small fictions. In three parts, she delivers us into the essence of light, dips us full-bodied into the effervescent chemicals we are made of, and then returns us to the sea where life as we know it really begins. The words, beyond language-rich, flawlessly represent images we want to hold under a microscope to try to assess the ways she gives them voice. It's a magic only a few can master. Make no mistake, this is the work of a sterling storyteller who weaves mystery with mundane to concoct a world view that draws us not only into her personal reflections of such basic natural forces (light, chemical, and sea), but leads us, sometimes unknowingly, into a labyrinth of cues and clues towards to the majesty of life we all belong to." —KAREN PIERCE GONZALEZ, AUTHOR OF DOWN RIVER WITH LI PO
Description: Jenny Wong peeks into the lives of characters caught in lighthouses, subways, shorelines, Walmart aisles, and airports. With a talent for lingering and looking, with the elemental precision of a poet, her small mosaics imbue the quotidian with quiet wonder. The international traveler, the preteen chemistry student, and the perimenopausal millennial who spends her days in the sun are trail guides for landscapes saturated with solitude and vastness, the whispers of ancestors and the ironies of aging. Light Chemical Sea reports back from the transpacific diaspora, glimpsing into the liminal pause between what happened and what happens next.
✨LIGHT CHEMICAL SEA - Cover Reveal!✨
After years of writing tiny stories about small moments, I’m so excited to announce that my flash fiction chapbook LIGHT CHEMICAL SEA is forthcoming November 10, 2026 with @bullcitypress.com
Preorders are now available:
bullcitypress.com/product/ligh...
Our current pamphlet is a joy to read! Have you got a copy yet?
Michael Greavy won the most recent Magma Open Pamphlet Competition with the simply gorgeous 'The Man who Made Up Trees'. His economy of language is used to perfection!
magmapoetry.com/publications...
Calendar item for AWP: come to our reception on Thursday, March 5 and meet our 2026 authors! First 20 people in the door get a free book. Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, 6 pm. Hope to see you there!
Prokosch’s portraits of heiresses, literari, and avant-garde-ists is as superbly styled as it is brutal. Modernism in its posthumous voice. Playing tennis with Ezra Pound, hanging out with the Mann twins, a who’s who of the 30’s and 40’s.
This World Day of The Sick we take time to remember those in our lives who are unwell.
Vital Signs, edited by Martin Dyar, is a collection of powerful and courageous responses to the human experience of illness and healing.
Purchase via: www.poetryireland.ie/publications...
Calling all poets under 25: one week left to enter our latest writing challenge! The challenge: write a poem about a transitional space or place, inspired by ecotones. Win poetry books, mentoring sessions, publication, and more... Free to enter! Deadline 15 February
Ecotones refer to transitional areas in nature. They are places where two separate ecosystems come together. A classic example is the zone where grassland and forest meet. Another example is the meeting place between land and water – where the ecotone, in this case, might be a floodplain or a marshland. What does this have to with poetry? ⟶
We can make our work dynamic and surprising by creating shifts that move a poem from one place to another. These might be literal places. You might move the setting from indoors to outdoors, from the sea to land, from one town to another – or even across the borders of one country to another. Challenge judge Alycia Pirmohamed
These shifts can even be metaphorical. You might start a poem in the present and then move into a memory. Or you might shift the emotions in a poem, like from a place of sorrow to a place of hope... Find prompts and enter the challenge on Young Poets Network: bit.ly/EcotonesYPN
Calling all young poets: only one week left to enter our latest writing challenge 🌱
The challenge: write a poem about a transitional space or place, inspired by ecotones.
Find prompts and enter: bit.ly/EcotonesYPN
Calling all writers! Check out the Writers Day on Saturday 7 March organised by The Writers Workshop in Sheffield. Info below
Enda Wyley, Thomas Morris, and Elaine Garvey will join our publisher Declan Meade to discuss their experiences of mentoring. They will offer insights into how mentorship works and the ways in which it can contribute to a writer's development.
Tuesday 10th March 7-8.15pm (Irish Time) via Zoom.
We are delighted to announce the next event in our Tuesday Nights Live! series.
Mentoring Panel – Online Event 🟥
Free event. Registration is required via 🔗 us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Wondering what we're up to this Spring? 🌼
Here are some key dates to add to your calendar 🗓️
More details on the applications for our Summer School & submissions window for our magazine cover artwork will be shared via newsletter 🎨
Sign up to our newsletter for updates🔗
stingingfly.org/newsletter/
I'm sorry to hear that, but yes, of course, life happens doesn't it? At any rate, I wish you both all the best whatever you ultimately decide to do.
Ace or proper job! As the bristolians say! ✨️✨️
You're welcome, Julia. And thank you. It's good to connect again with you. I wish I could say I'm doing ok, but unfortunately I'm not. I now have big swollen feet to match my sausage shaped fingers & ridiculously painful palms & wrists etc. This osteoarthritis pain is just slaying me, I'm afraid. 😨
Free Granta Therapy - I'll bite! @grantamag.bsky.social
A few days left...well it would be rude not to jump onto the couch / chair / cushions / sacred circle etc
