Introduction

The name of this new magazine, Horizon, was also the name of a groundbreaking literary review edited by Cyril Connolly back in the 1940s. I've always been fascinated by the history of literary reviews, the ‘little’ magazines; such ephemeral things — yet charged with astonishing intensity and potential to create change. As we move deeper into the uncharted territories of the internet, it will be interesting to see how online journals change and progress, how they adapt to their new surroundings.

As a reader, my ideal literary magazine is one where ideas and style matter equally, where the creative dynamics are allowed to shift from issue to issue, keeping readers entertained, informed, and provoked. As an editor, I want to stretch and challenge contributors as much as readers, to give writers considerably more scope for daring and ingenuity than they might get from a print magazine.

In recent years, we’ve seen the resurrection of good old-fashioned literary criticism, perhaps in reaction to previous critics placing too much emphasis on biography, writers’ backstories highlighted until the writing itself was eclipsed. It’s become popular now for reviewers to push in the opposite direction. Who cares about the writer? The work is all that should matter.

To this end, fiction is analysed in terms of sentence structure and word selection, each peak and trough of the narrative arc charted and examined according to mathematical principles; individual poems are disassembled and their various parts scanned for meaning, voice, and technical expertise.

This is what T.S. Eliot called ‘the lemon-squeezer school of criticism’; personally, I find lemon juice a little too sharp for my tastes.

The meticulous examination of a poem can be an invaluable tool, particularly for the academic, but I prefer a more holistic approach overall. I applaud critics who dare to take a step back and see the work as part of a whole, as the product of a particular writer in a particular age or tradition, before beginning to strip the work down to its disparate parts. The backstory is important, the detail is vital, but we also need to know how the work hangs together. Is there any grand design behind it? What does the writer give us overall?

I’m not interested in becoming too prescriptive about the sort of poetry, fiction, critical prose or literary oddities I’d like to receive from contributors. I’m not positioning myself either left, right or dead centre of the mainstream. What I will be seeking, however, in the work received, is an openness: to the physical, to the wider world, to ideas and language, and to the possibility of failure.

It may seem strange to be discussing failure here. But a willingness to take risks, even quite dangerous ones, is something I admire and encourage in writers. Literature without risk is like a meal without salt: predictable and unappealing. It’s important to bear in mind though that any risks should be based on the percentages, not taken at random or to extremes. Don't try this at home, etc.

I don’t want Horizon to be a cosy refuge for writers looking for allies and a comfortable place to sleep. I want it to prickle with energy, both negative and positive; to challenge preconceptions about the writing of poetry and fiction; to question methods of criticism and modes of thinking in a frank and open manner.

Finally, I intend Horizon to be like that thin steely line of the literal horizon, a place of new exchanges and opportunities, occupying both sides of the argument, an alluring view of the future, where one thing is always ending and another just beginning, where anything could happen — and definitely will.

Jane Holland