The London Magazine

02/04/2024

Our April/May 2024 issue is OUT NOW 🍊

Cover image by Holly Pollard

Poetry by Rachel Bower, George Murray, Niall Campbell, Matthew Francis, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Mary Noonan, Ivars Šteinbergs, Will Pittam, John Kinsella, Hugh Dunkerley, Gabrielle Tse, Venessa Lampert, Pip Osmund-Williams and Sasja Janssen

Short Fiction by Sheila Armstrong, Ed Cottrell, Richie Jones and Kieran Wyatt

Featuring: Charlotte Stroud on The Secrets of the Countryside, Amy K Grandvoinet on de Chirico’s Biscuit-Scapes, Konrad Muller on John Ruskin and the Overland Track, Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri on Lord Byron’s Liberalism

Reviews by Lucy Thynne, Patrick Cash, Rowland Bagnall, Hallam Bullock, Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou and Magnus Rena

Order here: https://thelondonmagazine.org/product/current-issue-2/

28/03/2024

'All at once, it felt nihilistic and misguided. I had been on this extended fast, but it was devoted to absent men and not any real god. As such, there had been no revelation or resolution, no peace.'

Christiana Spens on Lent.

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'All at once, it felt nihilistic and misguided. I had been on this extended fast, but it was devoted to absent men and not any real god. As such, there had been no revelation or resolution, no peace.' Christiana Spens on Lent.

22/03/2024

'She was so very, very fortunate, yes, she was.'

New fiction by Jane Messer.

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'She was so very, very fortunate, yes, she was.' New fiction by Jane Messer.

22/03/2024

New issue coming soon...

April/May 2024

21/03/2024

'For several long minutes, nothing changed. We seemed to be opposite and equal forces.'

New fiction by Laura Shaine Cunningham.

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'For several long minutes, nothing changed. We seemed to be opposite and equal forces.' New fiction by Laura Shaine Cunningham.

15/03/2024

'They were lying in his bed, intertwined, when Sylvi ran her fingers along his chest tattoos, and asked how many he had. In return, he asked for her number. But Sylvi didn’t have any tattoos.'

New fiction by Serena Coady.

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'They were lying in his bed, intertwined, when Sylvi ran her fingers along his chest tattoos, and asked how many he had. In return, he asked for her number. But Sylvi didn’t have any tattoos.' New fiction by Serena Coady.

12/03/2024

'In other words, there is a love that waits, and it has been and is being published in Latvia – as well as elsewhere – right now, before our eyes.'

Ivars Šteinbergs on Latvian poetry, from our SOLD OUT February/March issue.

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'In other words, there is a love that waits, and it has been and is being published in Latvia – as well as elsewhere – right now, before our eyes.' Ivars Šteinbergs on Latvian poetry.

29/02/2024

'Then as I was writing I was drawing this Exodus-like pillar of cloud, this memory of my brother, out of the dreamscape, out of the fog of the morning.'

Thomas Gardner on the new Daunt Books edition of his new collection, Poverty Creek Journal.

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'Then as I was writing I was drawing this Exodus-like pillar of cloud, this memory of my brother, out of the dreamscape, out of the fog of the morning.' Thomas Gardner on the new Daunt Books edition of his collection, Poverty Creek Journal.

20/02/2024

'Although choreographic notation systems exist, they are rarely readable to the uninitiated, and by dint of their static nature, cannot hope to express the full verve of a dance.'

Esmee Wright on Bronislava Nijinska.

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'Both contemporary pieces seek to build on this revolutionary choreography rather than imitate it perfectly, yet both acknowledge that Nijinska’s work marked key developments in the world of choreography, bridging the gap between one century and the next in the world of classical dance. So how did...

09/02/2024

'You are told you are lucky, and that luck is why you are the only child in the family who gets an education. You have a natural sense for numbers, and feel that luck is a question of numbers.'

New fiction by Lilia Salammbô Fetini.

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Lilia Salammbô Fetini Baa . . You are born in a field. You grow up in poverty. You are told you are lucky, and that luck is why you are the only child in the family who gets an education. You have a natural sense for numbers, and feel that luck is a question of...

07/02/2024

'The world, though made, is yet being made. That this is still the morning of creation.'

From Pacifica Goddard's essay on Hetch Hetchy, moving forward and finding the beauty in that process.

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Pacifica Goddard on Hetch Hetchy & The Greatest Good

05/02/2024

From our February/March 2024 issue, Hugh Foley reviews The Lights and Chariot.

Read here:

Hugh Foley Light Verse The Lights, Ben Lerner, Granta Books, 2023, pp.128, £12.99 Chariot, Timothy Donnelly, Wave Books, 2023, pp.112, £15.00 . . . One of the world’s richest and least thoughtful men often says that he hopes to use his obscene wealth to ‘extend the light of consciousness to th...

25/01/2024

Pre-order our February/March 2024 issue NOW 🌿

Cover image by Martin Lau

Poetry by Angela Kirby, Fiona Sampson, Efe Duyan, Michael Bazzett, Brett Shaw, Ali Lewis, Geoffrey Brock, Lucy Holme, Niamh Twomey, Sylee Gore, David Harsent, Serena Alagappan and Henriks Eliass Zēgners

Short Fiction by Hadley Franklin, Richard Smyth, Jimin Kang, Gary Grace and Gráinne O’Hare

Featuring: Ivars Šteinbergs on Latvia’s Poetry Scene, Katie Tobin on Fashion and the Bloomsbury Group, Pacifica Goddard on Hetch Hetchy, Yvonne Reddick on Winter Hill

Reviews by Nicola Healey, Patrick Cash, Hugh Foley and Guy Stagg

Order here: https://thelondonmagazine.org/product/current-issue-2/

23/01/2024

'With all the pieces I make, it’s about a conversation between what’s there and what isn’t there.'

We spoke to Turner prize-winner Lubaina Himid about her show, Lost Threads, currently showing at the Holburne Museum in Bath.

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Katie Tobin How Lubaina Himid’s Lost Threads confronts Bath’s colonial past Lost Threads at The Holburne Museum, 19 January – 21 April 2024. . . . Firstly, I’d just like to chat with you a little bit about how the inspiration for Lost Threads came about. . Lost Threads was commissioned in th...

22/01/2024

New issue coming soon...

February/March 2024

19/01/2024

'Arachne, the story of many women, the story of art and the story of us now.'

Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou on the The Mother & the Weaver at the Foundling Musuem.

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Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou The Mother & the Weaver The Mother & The Weaver: Art from the Ursula Hauser Collection at the Foundling Museum, 22 September 2023 – 18 February 2024. . . . I keep returning to the story of Arachne. To the story of a young girl gifted in the art of weaving. To the story...

16/01/2024

'This is not the book I wanted to write. I thought I should warn you before you venture any further. It is the least I can do.'

An extract from Andrew Gallix's Unwords, out on 18 January with Dodo Ink.

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Andrew Gallix The Draft of the Medusa . From Unwords by Andrew Gallix published by Dodo Ink, out 18th January 2024. . . (Preface as over explanation, as metabombast.) – Eley Williams, The Liar’s Dictionary (2020) . This is not the book I wanted to write. I thought I should warn you before you ve...

03/01/2024

From our December/January 2024 issue, Mai Serhan reviews We Call to the Eye & The Night: Love Poems from Persea Books.

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Mai Serhan Love, Between Surrender and Confrontation by Mai Serhan . We Call to the Eye & The Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, Eds. Hala Alyan & Zeina Hashem Beck, Persea Books, Paperback pp.240 . . . Yes, the Arab love poem emerged out of the very essence of daily life. It...

15/12/2023

'The day of the flood, wind roared in, carrying the cold of the sea. The metallic scent of melting snow filled the air, and meltwater floated across old snow. It was June, and the sun never set.'

New fiction by Katherine Robinson.

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Katherine Robinson Noah’s Wife . . The day of the flood, wind roared in, carrying the cold of the sea. The metallic scent of melting snow filled the air, and meltwater floated across old snow. It was June, and the sun never set. Wind scoured the concrete seed vault. Inside, the lights were all swi...

08/12/2023

New poetry by Jessa Brown.

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Jessa Brown French Lessons . . some of our best talks were in French, imperfect [,] tense, and almost crying with the strain: how best to really name the way I couldn’t say how I felt, coming close to what I couldn’t tell with words, some bisoux in between, but more, the busy silence of...

05/12/2023

'Mutual care, not simply self-care, can help secure better futures for us all, provide a firmer sense of our own belonging, and even moments of collective joy.'

We spoke to Lynne Segal about her new book, Lean on Me, out now with Verso Books.

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Katie Tobin A labour of love: how Lynne Segal’s new book explores motherhood and radical care . Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care, Lynne Segal, Verso, pp. 256, £17.99. . . . Your book, Lean On Me, explores the concept of radical care. It’s an idea – through various names and forms –...

05/12/2023

'Love didn’t need a subject or an object, our being, and our being together, was enough.'

Fight or Flight, a new essay from Daisy Sainsbury is now online. The story is also available in our December/January 2024 issue.

Read here:

Daisy Sainsbury Fight or Flight . . When I was a child, my dad used to tell a funny story about my brother falling out of a window. Louis was five at the time, and they were at my grandmother’s flat in the north of England. It was an ex-council housing complex, the ceilings were...

01/12/2023

Our December/January 2024 issue is OUT NOW 🌊

Cover image by Jean-Baptiste Besançon

Poetry by Ian Duhig, Martina Evans, Robyn Bolam, Bill Roberts, Helen Mort, Stephanie Norgate, Gillian Clarke, Amanda Nicole Corbin, Natalie Perman, Sue Hubbard, Dean Browne and Joana Urtasun

Short Fiction by Vida Adamczewski, Miranda Gold, Greg Jackson, Niamh Mac Cabe, Sarah Fletcher and Leeor Ohayon

Featuring: Fernando Sdrigotti on Duelling Literary Journals, Konrad Muller on Cairo’s Chess Cafes, Daisy Sainsbury on The Dimensions of Love, Daniel Mulhall on Yeats’ Nobel Prize, Jeremy Wikeley on Second-Hand Bookshops, and Horatio Morpurgo on The British Portsmouth Museum & Art Gallery

Reviews by Rowland Bagnall, Mai Serhan, Stuart Walton, Lucy Thynne and Amber Knowles

Order here: https://thelondonmagazine.org/product/current-issue-2/

01/12/2023

Winner of this year's Short Story Prize, Niamh Mac Cabe's Four Night Seas is now online.

Available in our December/January 2024 issue, out TODAY.

Read here:

Niamh Mac Cabe Four Night Seas . (& An Admission of Failure) . Winner of The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2023 . . . 3 am, driving home from a wild Connemara party, drunk. A sodden half-moon hung above them. Passing Silverstrand, the car beams caught two small white discs shining out from the.....

28/11/2023

'At the top of the slope, I can hear a mother tell her children that everything they’ll ever need is here in California.'

New essay from Talullah Griffith.

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Tallulah Griffith Pareidolia . . . There exists, for each of us, a kind of shape we see repeated. A shard-like template, difficult to grasp, its contours easily recognised and quick to cut the skin, but with an outline that is not standard; akin in some ways to a triangle, but with extra edges. When...

27/11/2023

'Alec gestures towards the sea over which the moon has fully risen. ‘It refers to the path of light cast by the moon across water. It means moon street.’'

New fiction from Laura-Blaise McDowell.

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Laura Blaise-McDowell Moon Street .   They sit on the patio, sipping their wine in the early evening. . ‘He’s a composer, Erin said.’ . On the other side of the table, Mel nods his head, his steady gaze angled out over the sea where a shell-pink moon has begun to slip from behind the...