Over on Twitter, Magma (the renowned print-based poetry journal) have engaged positively in a debate about the cost of entering their pamphlet competition, which was 20 pounds. They've stated...
The brutal truth is that poetry magazines need competitions, grants etc to survive long term. Of course we'd rather sell more magazines...And we do have a reduced entry rate for our heroic band of subscribers who help to keep us going.
It's worth placing this quote in the context of a comment by Rob MacKenzie, the editor of Issue 79 of Magma, on a separate Twitter thread, in which he mentions the following
For Magma 79, we have between 5000 to 6000 poems submitted...
In my view, the brutal truth is not the need for competitions and grants. Instead, it's the huge disparity between the number of poets who submit and those who subscribe to print-based magazines. If just 10% of the poets who submitted to Magma were to subscribe, the journal would surely be self-sustaining. The key question is why they don't do so.
My local writers group began as a "Circle" in 1948. It removed "Circle"
from its name decades ago because of the connotations that "Circle" had
then. Tho...
