Marie Marshall

(c) Kathy Bentley

There are several things I like about Decanto magazine, apart from the fact that the editor often selects poems by me for inclusion (see the current issue). The first is that it is more like an anthology than a magazine – in fact it describes itself as a ‘Magazine/Anthology’ and its fifty-five-so-far issues must add up to an anthological library of some content and force. The second is that its editorial policy is one that lifts away the Chinese walls between the various modes of poetical expression; thus one might find a sonnet on the same page as a piece of experimental modern poetry, is if to say that ‘there is only poetry’ and that the divisions between formal/free, product/process, whatever/whatever are too artificial to matter much. The third is that the poetry is always of a high quality. As a whole, Decanto makes it clear to the reader that it is produced by someone who loves poetry, and that’s fine by me!

I have three pieces in the latest Shot Glass Journal, which styles itself ‘An Online Journal of Short Poetry’. My pieces are jisei – essentially poems written in the imminence of death – and are in the form of ‘4-5-4’ haiku.

In the pipeline is more publication news, but I am going to hold it all back until it actually happens.