Salt Publishing

Your Online Lit-Hit: Horizon Review now live!

Anna Lawson: 'Choice in a Pinny', from the latest issue of Horizon Review


Click to Hit: -
The second issue of online arts journal Horizon Review is now live and waiting to be read. It's dedicated to all you readers on the internet. There are so many million readers out there, it's hard trying to imagine such a vast number, especially gathered round one literary webspace. (The Salt website overall enjoys over 16 million hits per year.)

And this new issue of Horizon is packed with new and fascinating poems, stories, articles, reviews, and interviews for everyone to enjoy.


Look & Listen: -
There's also a specially-commissioned Look & Listen section featuring new media.

It boasts a poetry film by Anton Hecht and Kevin Cadwallender, our brand-new Horizon Podcast - witty, energetic, provocative, poetic - and some entertainingly original Horizon artwork by Anna Lawson based on some of the fiction in this issue.


Too Big to Swallow? Take Time to Chew Properly: -
Take your time over this issue of Horizon. For a start, it's absolutely vast. You won't be able to get through all this fantastic material in one, or even two visits.

So don't exhaust yourself. Browse gently now, come back tomorrow or the day after, browse again, and send yourself a memo to return whenever you feel the need for a powerful Lit-Hit.

Commissioning Editor at Salt

To add to my writing schedule, my studies, and my duties as Editor at Horizon Review, I am pleased to announce - or should that be 'admit'? - that I am now also a Commissioning Editor at Salt Publishing.

What this means in basic terms is that sleep is no longer an option. But who needs sleep, right?



Your typical literary editor, living a hermit-like existence, with no time to dress, eat, shave or socialise ... only to read submissions.

For those eager to view the next issue of Horizon Review, you do not have much longer to wait. The second issue is completely finished, and the current plan is to upload it to the Salt site over the next week or so; it should be launched by mid-month.


tags: Commissioning Editor

Nearly ... almost ... right on the edge

Horizon Review II is almost there, bar the uploading.

The past week has seen more activity down here in the Salt mines than is altogether healthy. Every incoming and accepted document has had to be checked for formatting, edited for style and sense, transferred into its correct folder on the desktop, and its contributor contacted for last minute revisions, queries - plus the all-important photograph and extended bio.

Sixty-four separate items, plus roughly the same amount of jpg files (photos), plus the art attachments - a host of glorious, full colour photographs to accompany our two art features, one on Cardiff & Miller with Modern Art Oxford (see below) and the other on the Symbolist art of Keith Winnett.



Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. Photo: Seber Ugarte & Lorena Lopez

The final total makes somewhere in the region of 145 files to be prepared and transferred to the webmaster, aka Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt Publishing.

I'm about two-thirds of the way there. Done most of the files. Just the last quarter of magazine files to send, then all the jpg photos. And the all-important editorial. Last to be written, last to be revised, last to be transferred to Salt and slotted into its shiny new home at the head of Horizon Review II.

And I can't stop listening to our creamy Horizon podcast. It's just brilliant. Supremely 'juiced', as Hemingway might have put it.

Crazy Horizon Wednesday

An End to Crazy Wednesdays

Yes, it's Crazy Wednesday again! I've been working on our beloved Horizon Review every Wednesday for the past few months, since Wednesday is the only day I can set aside from my own work to look at new submissions, read and edit commissioned pieces, plus reply to email queries about the next issue.

But since it's so close to publication date (early March should see HR II go live online), Crazy Horizon Wednesday has been subsumed into an insane flurry of Every Possible Minute Horizon, as I chase up late commissions, clear my groaning inbox and gossip behind the scenes with some of my exciting contributors. And the latest gossip is ... well, more of that later. For now, let's just say it's going to be a fabulous month for poets and poetry in the news.


Horizon Review Podcast

Meanwhile, my biggest excitement of the week so far has been listening to the initial edit of the most excellent, jaw-droppingly entertaining, first ever Horizon Review Podcast!

And in our amazing podcast, we have ...

Poet and editor of Poetry Review, Fiona Sampson, giving us an inside view of poetic nepotism from a cupboard-under-the-stairs at the Poetry Society.

Poet and performer Annie Freud, reading her work at the Royal Festival Hall.

The stunning young novelist, Gwendoline Riley (see her latest novel, Joshua Spassky, pictured above), chatting freely to our presenters - after a few generous libations - about truth, literary influences and 'prick-lit'.

Sam Riviere, a promising young poet, whose work opens and closes the podcast with great aplomb.

I genuinely can't wait to hear feedback on this most irreverent and provocative Horizon podcast, and indeed the rest of this new issue, which is going to break all hits records for the site, I'm convinced of it. The Salt website saw 1.4 million hits overall in December. But once we go live next month and the visitors start to arrive in their thousands ...


Okay, so what's in the next issue?

We've got the bewilderingly, blisteringly, excellent HR Podcast, we've got a poetry film by Anton Hecht, we've got specially commissioned HR cartoons, we've got poetry from a wide range of voices, a wealth of brilliant new short fiction, reviews, articles, some original drama, two superb interviews with poet Kate Clanchy and television writer Andrew Davies, plus our Horizon columnists to close out the issue: the controversial George Ttoouli on poetry, and Telegraph blogger Peter Robins on the literary world.

Only a few more weeks to go, folks. Start buying in the popcorn now.

Horizon on "Start the Week", Radio 4

I'll be talking about Horizon Review and the future of literary criticism on "Start the Week" this Monday, 20th October - at 9am, if you're ever up that early on a Monday! - which is BBC Radio 4's flagship arts programme.

The other guests with me this Monday are Rupert Goold, theatre director - who's currently directing Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear, along with Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Audience at the Gielgud Theatre, Pinter at the Duke of York AND Oliver! at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - also Duncan Wu, writer and biographer (his most recent work is a biography of William Hazlitt) and Jackie Wullschlager, chief art critic for the Financial Times, who's just written a comprehensive tome on the Russian emigré artist Chagall.

If you miss it on Monday, the programme should be available for about a week using the Listen Again facility on the BBC Radio 4 website.

I'll be visiting the Poetry Library at the South Bank afterwards, having lunch with poet, critic and creative writing tutor George Ttoouli at the Poetry Society, and generally swanning about London in search of lattés and good poetry.

Ah, the life of a literary editor ...

David Morley's "Slow Poetry"

Following on from his excellent work in the first issue of Horizon Review, poet David Morley has been on go-slow in recent months ... yet working harder than ever!

Discover a newly released film and still photographs of over 80 'natural' or 'slow' poems embedded along trails at the beautiful Strid Woods in North Yorkshire, including poems featured in the first Horizon, by visiting the University of Warwick website.


tags: david morley, slow poetry

The Art of the Dinner Party

I went to a dinner party last night at the artist Colin Dick's house in Coventry, whose work is featured in the first issue of Horizon Review. I was there with my husband, Steven Haynes, and two other guests, the artist and critic Richard Yeomans and his wife Anne.

Delia, Colin's wife, showed us round their charming home, the walls of which are covered with Colin's paintings and sketches. A wonderful house, every room we saw was packed with poetry, literary fiction, art books, notebooks of poems and sketches. There are also shelves groaning with archived portfolios of paintings and sketches that Colin has produced over six prolific decades. It was too dark to take a trip down the garden to his studio, but perhaps we'll be able to see that on a future visit.

We discussed the first issue of Horizon at great length, and Colin was dismayed to discover that Mark Williams' translation of the 'recently discovered Fifth Branch of the Mabinogi' is an elaborate, scholarly hoax. He was so excited by the story, he had already begun making preliminary sketches for paintings to accompany the work!

However, he did present me with some beautiful new poems for the next issue, and a number of books which he knew would interest me personally, such as an Exeter University edition of Guy of Warwick's adventures, a medieval tall tale in which the brave Sir Guy defends the moorland area of Dunchurch in Warwickshire - near where we are currently living - from a vast, rampaging cow!

I'm still looking for features on artists for the next few issues, plus reviews of literary fiction.

And if anything in the first issue moves you to write to Horizon Review, there will be a "Letters" page in each issue from now on.

So don't be shy - check the submissions page for details, and get in touch!

tags: reviews, letters to the editor, art, artists, first issue,

Horizon Review Is Born

As of early this afternoon, Horizon Review lives!

There are some fine things in this first issue, and I very much hope all our new Horizon readers will enjoy getting thoroughly acquainted with the contents list. There are both new and established writers on show here, and all of them with original and well-written work to explore, admire and devour, including poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, articles on writing and publishing, etc.

There were a few hiccups during the transfer of files, but those are being sorted even as I type this. The good thing is that I can now see how it should be done next time.

Note to self: don't leave everything to the last minute, Jane, and expect the transfer to take a single day. It doesn't take a day. It takes three, and that's at a relentless pace. So next time, start sooner and expect anything!

A Strange, Shining Flotilla ...

I have just finished - collapsed with relief, actually - emailing over to Salt the strange, shining flotilla of files which was Horizon Review Issue One in embryo. Over the past few days, the files have been sent out into cyberspace one by one, at intervals or in quick succession, strapped to each other for comfort like drowning sailors to rafts.

For nearly a week now, preparing for this moment, I've barely slept, I've snatched meals on the run, I've shooed children from the room, I've said 'N'yet' to favourite television programmes, invitations from friends, the allure of enticing emails in the in-box, and even had to refuse a phone chat with one of my regular gossip-mongers this morning - now that hurt!

And all the files have arrived safely, and Chris has begun the Great Upload.

I can't say when Horizon will be live and ready to view. All out of my hands now. Soon though, very soon.

But the whole process of putting together this first issue - from discussing the original concept with Chris through to delivery of the last few files a few hours ago - has been by turns exhausting and stressful and exhilarating and magnificent.

Although the poetry, short fiction, reviews and articles may take a little longer to appear, my Editorial for the first ever Horizon Review is already viewable here. I imagine the rest of the magazine will not be far behind.

And after a decent interval for sleep, food, and maybe writing something of my own for a change, I can turn my mind hazily to the next issue.

These are the marvellous, sunny uplands of an issue, the first few days after the last one has been cut loose, when everything ahead is still in a deliciously unformed state of potential and no one has yet said 'No thanks' to an invitation to submit or emailed over a file so outsized it's crashed my computer in the middle of some sensitive procedure.

It's been quite a journey, quite an odyssey, these past few months as a literary editor again. Where next?

Colin Dick: a 'regional' painter with an eye for carnival

Colin Dick's "Carnaval at Dunkirk"
Reproduced with kind permission of the artist

I'm delighted to announce that the first issue of Horizon Review - due to be launched online next month - will feature an in-depth article by artist and critic Richard Yeomans on the life and work of Colin Dick, a contemporary 'regional' painter and poet from Coventry.

Colin Dick's powerful and dynamic paintings and sketches not only reflect almost half a century of change in the old city centre of Coventry, but also touch on the lives and customs of travellers and other marginalised groups in modern society. His interest in folk tradition has increasingly led him to capture carnivalesque scenes from local festivals and activities such as the Molly Dance and the Mop Fair at Warwick.

Later work, such as the "Carnaval at Dunkirk" (sic) painting above, looks further afield with what Yeomans describes as 'haunting and striking images' of the annual carnival at Dunkirk.

Colin Dick is also a poet, and you can find a photograph of Colin Dick on the Heaventree Press site, reading his poetry in May 2007 at the First Coventry Festival of Literature and Liberty.