As Stephen Fry said in his radio series Saturday Night Fry, “all good things must come to an end, and so do not such good things.” That series sadly ran to just 6 episodes. At least Square has managed to achieve the monumental feat of reaching double figures, but it is a shame to be bringing things to an end. The magazine possibly had potential to run and run by continuing to support, and being supported by a healthy poetry and literary scene in Cardiff and beyond. But despite kind offers of help from various people, I attempted to continue to basically run the magazine on my own, which I have been finding increasingly difficult. The pressure of preparing each issue started to get to me I think. And selling them also became an increasing chore. Having zero knowledge of running a business didn’t help.
Not that it was ever meant to be a ”business”. It started as a humble project to allow people to read the work of writers from the Square Writers’ Group, and I tried to always maintain the small scale nature of it. As I’ve repeated many times after all, there is no money in poetry and anyone who tries to pretend otherwise is likely to fall flat on their faces. Only in very rare exceptional cases will anyone ever cross-over to become more widely known and be able to start to make money – John Cooper Clarke, or John Hegley for example – and in most of these cases, it’s because they also have some links to the music industry.
Poetry magazines come and go. The Yellow Crane, run by J. Brookes, also from Cardiff, ran to 30-odd issues, and I would have liked to emulate this, but I don’t think I’ve quite got the same enthusiasm for poetry as that magazine’s editor. I must admit, I feel a bit of a fraud sometimes as although I do enjoy writing and performing my own poetry, as well as listening to others, poetry has never been my first love. The humour in a lot of the work I do is almost a piss-take of more traditional poetry, a lot of which leaves me cold. And the sad fact is that most of the stuff that is sent in to me is not at all of the style I like, or would like to put in the magazine. It’s true that a lot of people who submit to magazines never read the magazine first to suss out the style they might be looking for.
I certainly had a lot sent in for this issue – the Revolution issue – after a couple of requests for submissions on facebook. In the past, I’d always had enough submissions to not need to put out a request, but they had dried up a little bit. As soon as I put the requests out though, I became inundated, so apologies to all those people I’ve had to miss out. I think there’s quite a lot of quality in this last issue though, and I’ve enjoyed putting it together.
Finally, a few thank yous to various people who’ve helped over the last 3 years of the production of this little mag. First of all to Rob and all at Autoprinters who have always done a fantastic job with the printing of each issue, at a good price. Never any problems, and always on time – I would recommend Autoprinters to anyone. Thanks to all of the original Square Writers’ group, especially David Foster Morgan – possibly the most regular contributor to the mag – Shelagh Middlehurst, Barrie Llewelyn, John Davies, Paul Yoward and also Chris Brooke, who ran the group, but sadly never contributed to the mag, but has still helped in various longs away the long. Thanks to Gemma Howell who helped out with Issue 6, and for constant words of advice about how to run the mag (shame it never quite happened Gemma!). Big thanks to Mab Jones,Cardiff’s most enterprising poet and promoter, who has supported the mag pretty much since day 1. Thanks to the 20 or so subscribers who considered the magazine worthy of supporting on a longer term basis. Thanks to all the venues who’ve put on launches of the mag, including the Shot in the Dark cafe, O’Neill’s, The North Star, The Cardiff Arts Institute, The Funky Buddha Lounge and The Poets’ Corner. Thanks to the Books Council and the academi for their support. Thanks to the Poetry Library – have had some great contributions from people who’ve read the mag there. Thanks to family and friends, and thanks to everyone who has ever read the magazine, contributed to it, or supported it in anyway – all greatly appreciated. You never know, it is just possible I may revive it at some point, but not having applied for a Books Council grant, there will be a Square-shaped gap in the world for at least a year!
...nick fisk
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