About Shearsman Books & Shearsman magazine
The first series of Shearsman magazine (1981-83) consisted of six journal issues (the contents of which are now available in digitised form at the UK's Poetry Library magazine website, where copyright permits), and two issues which consisted of chapbook collections (issue 4: slim pamphlets by Martin Anderson, Philip Crick, Gustaf Sobin & Nathaniel Tarn; issue 8: two thicker, stapled books by David Jaffin), and was edited — with some difficulty — from Malaysia, where I was then working. A move from Malaysia to the Middle East then rendered further publication impossible, leading to the magazine ceasing publication after the eighth issue and being merged into a new London-based venture called Ninth Decade
(subsequently, for obvious reasons, Tenth Decade). Ninth/Tenth Decade
was co-edited with Robert Vas Dias, previously editor of Atlantic Review
and Permanent Press, and the late Ian Robinson, editor of Oasis
and Oasis Books, both of whom had also reached a point in the development of their respective journals that rendered continued publication difficult. Ninth/Tenth Decade
continued until 1991 and then folded, after fourteen issues.
In 1991, Oasis
and Shearsman
magazines were revived by Ian Robinson and myself, respectively, and in similar A5 formats. Shearsman's format was in fact an imitation of the successful one initiated by Oasis, with size driven by the weight for postage — as usual, a significant cost factor for a little magazine. Design by now was being achieved through computer-based DTP, and printing moved from offset to photocopying. From 1991 to 2005 Shearsman published 62 issues in a resolutely minimalist, low-cost format. The first ten issues of this new series of the magazine are also available in digitised form at the UK's National Poetry Library, and some later issues may be found here on the Shearsman site. With effect from the double issue 63 & 64 (Summer 2005), the magazine changed to a book-sized format, running up to 108 pages in length, and appearing twice yearly in April and October. The rationale for this change was simply that it made sense to produce the magazine in the same way as the books the press was producing, but also because it was actually more cost-effective to mail out bigger issues twice rather than slim issues four times. Some (but not all) of the contents of these book-length issues also appears on this website. See here
for more information. We have retained the double-issue concept because of the difficulty of unravelling the subscriptions to single issues in the early days after the change. Once that problem had been solved, however, we'd set a new pattern that was also hard to break in any coherent way. So, doubles it is.
In terms of the magazine's position with regard to contemporary poetry, there is a clear inclination towards the more exploratory end of the current spectrum. Notwithstanding this, however, quality work of a more conservative kind will always be considered seriously, provided that the work is well-written. What I do not like at all is sloppy writing of any kind; I always look for some rigour, although I will be more forgiving of failure if the writer is trying to push out the boundaries. I tend to like mixing work from both ends of the spectrum in the magazine, and firmly believe that good writing can, and should, cohabit with other forms of good writing, regardless of the aesthetic that drives it, and regardless of whether the practitioners are happy about such cohabitation.