Now out!
Acumen 111 – January 2025
Acumen 111 highlights powerful new writing by well-known and emerging poets from across the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and beyond. Contributors include David Ball, Sarah Feldman, Gareth Culshaw, Julia Deakin, Wendy French, Steve Denehan, Myra Schneider, Colin Pink, Rosie Jackson, Martyn Crucefix, Patrick Osada, Isabel Miles, Jodi Cadenhead, Dinah Livingstone, Liam Aungier, Paul Surman, Caroline Price, David Sergeant, Jan FitzGerald, Chris Rice, Judith Skillman, Mike Everley, Tytti Heikkinen, Michael W. Thomas, Maggie Brookes-Butt, Toby Buckley, Linda Stern Zisquit, and many others.
This issue features an interview with Fred Beake, who examines the influences shaping poetry, including Greek literature, The Gawain Poet, myths such as The Cyclops, many British, French and American poets, historical events, and landscapes, including North Yorkshire on his writing.
Essays include Paul Gittins’s incisive study of working horses in poetry and Robert Griffiths’s exploration of the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence. Poetry in Translation features works by Ishihara Yoshiro, Anna Akhmatova, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Rudolf Leonhard and others. The Reviews section presents critical insights from Kathleen McPhilemy, Colin Pink, Susan Mackervoy, and Andrew Geary.
An annual subscription to the Acumen Journal covers 3 issues packed with great poetry, plus stimulating reviews and essays. It represents great value for money for either yourself or as a thoughtful gift for a poetry-lover.
Editorial
Welcome to Acumen. Do check out our pages and great poems.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF ACUMEN. And a special thank you to those of you who have renewed your subscriptions and have added a donation, so that we can keep the price lower. If you haven’t renewed your subscription for Acumen, please do so here.
Thank you to everyone submitting poems and prose. Acumen has been experiencing a wonderful increase in submissions lately, and we’re grateful for the interest in our magazine. Thanks for your patience while everything is carefully reviewed. Please remember we do not accept simultaneous submissions, but we consider postal and electronic submissions. We do, however, encourage contributors to carefully review our submission guidelines to ensure their work aligns with what we publish – poetry and prose on poetry-related topics, and not short stories. To prepare your submission and for more information please see here.
We’re excited to share the latest Acumen with you, though we must apologise for recent postage issues. Unfortunately, some issues of Acumen have disappeared in Royal Mail. If you’ve experienced any delays or problems, please do let us know. Despite this, we’re committed to ensuring that everyone can enjoy the exceptional work featured in the latest edition. PDF copies are available, plus a very small number of printed copies which we are sending to those whose copies have gone astray. Please contact the Acumen editor for more information.
Thank you for your continued interest in Acumen and the world of poetry. As Emily Dickinson said, ‘I dwell in possibility’ – and it is through your support that we continue to explore the endless possibilities of poetry.
I end with lines that have been attributed to Yeats, but more likely originated from English author and playwright, Eden Phillpotts: ‘The universe is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.’ I hope that the coming months give you magical things that your senses can sharpen to find, especially through the troubled world that often surrounds us.
Guest Poems and Young Poets
Acumen’s aim is to be wide-ranging, publishing contemporary poets both known and unknown, relying on the strength of the poetry rather than the name behind it.
Selected poems from each issue are posted on the website as guest poems for the week. We add photographs and very short biographies – a thing we don’t do in the magazine, preferring at that stage to let the poems speak for themselves.
Piers Cain
Piers Cain grew up in Ruislip, Middlesex a ‘Metroland’ suburb of outer London. He read History at University College London and subsequently obtained a postgraduate diploma in Archive Studies. His career focussed on knowledge management and general management in the professional services and international development sectors. Having lived and worked in US, Europe and Africa, he is now lives in Stromness, Orkney.
Julie Craig
Julie Craig is a poet and English teacher in Berkshire. Originally from the US, she has lived in Northern Ireland and Botswana before settling in England. Her writing generally reflects the cultures and concerns of the places Julie has called home, as well as addressing wider world issues. In addition to writing poetry, Julie enjoys travelling and listening to an eclectic mix of music.
Arthur Lawson
Arthur Lawson is a 19 year old poet, studying psychology at the University of Bristol. His work features on the London Underground and as a commended Foyle Young Poet.
Heather Chapman
Heather Chapman is a Durham University student. She was a 2023 Foyles Young Poet, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Tower Poetry competition and the 2023 Wells Festival Young Poets prize.
We love to publish new and established writers, in our journal and/or on our website and we are proud to have discovered many new voices.
We welcome unpublished poems, translations of poems, articles and debate on poetry covering a wide variety of topics and with different writing styles.
Find out how to submit your poems.
Poetry and Prose
Books and publications
We have a range of quality poetry publications for sale which we hope you will enjoy reading including hardbacks, paperbacks, pamphlets and single issues of the journal.
Electrifying Announcement!
Acumen is among the longest-running literary magazines today.
Patricia Oxley started Acumen in 1985 armed with only an electric typewriter, and without subscribers or contributions. Since then it has grown to one of the country’s leading literary journals.
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