Acumen

Poetry magazines come and go; some flourish, some vanish after two or three issues. Acumen, edited in South Devon by Patricia Oxley, celebrated its first 25 years in 2011.

I remember my delight back in April 1988 when two of my early sonnets appeared in issue 7, along with poems by Kathleen Raine, Vernon Scannell and John Heath-Stubbs. Here's one of the sonnets (the subject is the Soviet poet Irina Ratushinskaya, who, on her 29th birthday, was sentenced to seven years in a work camp):

Irina

They spoiled your liver, lungs, your kidneys, heart
and ovaries; they almost froze the life
from you because your work, the truth, your art
was deemed a crime against their State. Your life
was pierced with needles. And now your brain bursts
with a thousand remembered pains as you
live a kind of freedom, telling of thirsts,
of hungers and humiliations. You
who have worlds shining from your eyes had dreams
of a cherry-red dress as you pulled on
your anorak and canvas boots. It seems
to me you'll get your dress and slip it on
as, unafraid, you didn't give up hope
when picking out the truth on bits of soap.

(Note: the prisoners weren't allowed writing materials, so new poems had to be memorised or, in some cases, etched into precious bars of soap.)

Today, Acumen has a very professional appearance, with a striking coloured cover which changes for every issue. Back in 1988, the cover was an unillustrated pale blue and the text looked as though it had been produced on a typewriter; this, of course, did not affect the quality of the poetry.

Issue 72 has just appeared - and I'm happy to be there again, this time with a couple of haiku.

On the carousel
the old suitcase
unclaimed again.

An issue of Acumen costs £4.50 (£2.00 in 1988.) More details at www.acumen-poetry.co.uk

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