Quick Flick – Popshot

This week at Stack has seen a whole load of beautiful magazines landing on our desks in preparation for the next Printout event on 3 November. Currently top of my pile is Popshot, a bi-annual British magazine that champions contemporary poetry and illustration. They like their themes at Popshot and this issue is dedicated to love, but as you can guess from Kate Copeland’s cover illustration, it’s not all love hearts and snuggles.

Editor Jacob Denno has done an excellent job of collating love poems that hold contemporary relevance and aren’t wrapped up in the more clichéd formats we tend to anticipate from poetry anthologies (especially when it comes to the theme of love). ‘Allow Yourself This One Day’ by Max Wallis is a nostalgic view on the stifled idleness you feel the day after a break up, “hungover from love. To sit in your sad cocoon.” The accompanying illustration of a couple entwined inside an hour-glass perfectly complements Wallis’ melancholy prose.

This issue has an interview with Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine and one of the eight poets chosen for the Faber New Poets Scheme. Each poem is followed by a short blurb about the writer’s inspiration, which can be enlightening at times but can also spoil the mystery and subjectivity of the poem.