Boomerang is a smart new magazine of poetry and prose hitting cyberspace at http://www.boomeranguk.com/. The poetry editor is Neil Rollinson, so it's not surprising that the 'zine is visually pretty stunning. Neil has succeeded in attracting poets more often associated with print than browser (such as Gerard Woodward, Matthew Sweeney and Penelope Shuttle) to the first edition. This sort of crossover is starting to bridge what has been a fairly significant gap between the media, and it's good to see it narrowing. The magazine is hoping to publish animated poems as well as conventionally static work in the future. And speaking of the future, there's even a special version of the site, with short poems suitable for display on your WAP phone. Oh yes, it pays for contributions, too.
The name of (this) poetry site is a little confusing, but it can be found easily enough at http://thispoetrysite.com/. It's an attractive magazine, and also provides its contents in Adobe Acrobat format for off-line browsing. This is a good thing and more magazine sites ought to consider it. The magazine itself is almost entirely poetry; there's no editorial, just a bit of background information and some links.
By contrast, Martin Blyth's site at http://martinblyth.co.uk/ contains very little poetry, but a number of essays and letters on various aspects of the poetry scene. Martin has strongly held, and often controversial opinions. His entertaining and incisive account of the Ledbury Poetry festival is not to be missed.
The Electronic Literature Organization site at http://www.eliterature.org/ is a valuable resource with news and examples of all types of electronic literature. A new feature of the site is an ambitious database of available works. It's in beta-test as I write, and should be available by the time you read this.
I can't always fit everything in, but let me know anyway, by way of ...
Copyright © Peter Howard 2000-2004