Magma is unique in that each issue has a different theme and different editors. The editorship circulates among the group that runs the magazine, with frequent guest editors. 

Magma Poetry is a London-based poetry magazine founded in 1994 by Helen Nicholson and Laurie Smith. It is renowned for its unique editorial approach, featuring a different editor for each issue, which brings a fresh perspective and diversity to its content. This rotating editorship allows for a wide range of voices and styles, fostering inclusivity and innovation in contemporary poetry. 

Each issue of Magma is centered around a specific theme, aiming to engage with the world through the best in contemporary poetry. 

The magazine showcases a blend of established poets and emerging voices, presenting work that values experimentation, ambition, and craft. In addition to poetry, Magma includes reviews of current publications and thought-provoking prose, offering a comprehensive exploration of the poetic landscape. 

Magma Poetry continues to be a vital platform for contemporary poetry, fostering a dynamic and inclusive literary community through its diverse editorial approach and commitment to high-quality, thought-provoking content.

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Magma Poetry

General call

The Judge’s Prize – poems of 11 to 50 lines
The Editors’ Prize – poems of up to 10 lines

Magma Poetry Prizes

MAGMA POETRY COMPETITION 2025/26
Is now open for entries in both categories  
The Judge’s Prize – poems of 11 to 50 lines
The Editors’ Prize – poems of up to 10 lines
Deadline 31 January 2026 11.59pm GMT

 

This year the Judge’s Prize for poems of 11 to 50 lines will be judged by Rishi Dastidar whose poetry has been published by the Financial Times, New Scientist and the BBC, amongst many others. His third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize, and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor ofToo Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He reviews poetry forThe Guardian and is chair ofWasafiri. His latest publication is A hobby of mine (Broken Sleep Books).
The Editors’ Prize is judged by a panel of Magma Editors and is for poems of up to 10 lines. The prize money for both competitions is the same, so double your chances and try your luck at both.
First prize for the Judge’s and Editors’ Prize is £1000, second prize £300 and third prize £150. 
The three prize-winning poems from each category will be published in Magma and there will also be five special mentions for each of the Judge’s Prize and Editors’ Prize categories.  All winning and commended poems will be published online on the Magma website. Winning and commended poets will be invited to read their poems at a Magma Competition event in Spring 2026.
Last years' winners are published in Magma 92 Ownership Issue which you can purchase for £8.50 here. All winning and commended poems are published in a free-to-download PDF here.
The entry fees are £5 for the first poem, £4 for the second poem and £3.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second poem, and £2.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. 
You can subscribe to Magma from £22.00 via our Get Magma page. 
 
HOW TO ENTER VIA SUBMITTABLE

  You may enter as many poems as you like in each category, but you must submit to each category in separate documents. 
  Please upload the poems in one document for each category. Please name the documents Judge’s Prize or Editors’ Prize as applicable and submit all of the poems for that category in the relevant document.   
  Do not include your name or any other identifying marks on the poems themselves.    
  Pay for all entries by picking the appropriate payment amount for total poems submitted. Subscriber and non-subscriber entries will be cross-referenced against our subscriber list and incorrectly paid entries may be disqualified. You can subscribe to Magma from £22.00 via our Get Magma page but you must do this before you enter. 
  The entry fees are £5 for the first poem, £4 for the second and £3.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second, and £2.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. 
  The competition closes at 11.59pm GMT on 31 January 2026.


 
GENERAL

  No alterations can be made after receipt, nor fees refunded. 
  All poems must not have been previously published, self-published or accepted for publication in print or online, broadcast, or have won or been placed in another competition at any time.
  The judge’s and editors’ decisions are final and no correspondence can be entered into. No entrant may win more than one prize in each section. 
  Should the named judge be unable to proceed, we aim to substitute an alternative judge of equivalent standing as a poet. 
  Prizewinners will be notified individually in April 2026. The results will also be published on the Magma Poetry website after the prize-giving event. 
  Copyright of each entry remains with the author, but Magma Poetry has the right to first publication of the winning poems in print and/or online within six months of the competition deadline. 
  Entry implies acceptance of all the rules. Failure to comply with the rules will result in disqualification.

Magma Poetry Competition 2025/26

Call for Submissions – Magma 95: Architecture
Submissions window open 10th November to 10th December 2025
***********************************************************
Architecture

This issue of Magma grows out of our collaboration with architecture scholars which began during a conference at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge in Spring 2025. The conference, Poetic Spatial Writing invited us to work with architecture scholars and students in order to explore creative approaches within their research, blurring the boundaries between academic and artistic practice. We’re delighted to bring that conversation into Magma 95, through poems and prose that explore structure, space, and the act of construction itself. We hope to share more of this collaborative project in the pages of Magma 95. 
We invite poems that consider architecture both as subject and method – that work through structure, proportion, rhythm, and light. What is a home if not the language we construct within and around ourselves – with bricks, air, arches, and thresholds?
We are looking for poems whose form is inseparable from content; poems that build meaning through their architecture – whether literal or metaphorical, interior or exterior, ruin or revelation. We want to read poems that take us into substantial, inhabitable structures of thought; poems that invite us to walk through their spaces, feeling how syntax, line, and silence hold and release meaning.
We also welcome work that engages with physical or imagined architecture – the spaces we live in, move through, or dream about:

  urban grids, towers, ruins, infrastructures, rooms, and landscapes shaped by human;
  questions of shelter and exposure, boundary and permeability;
  architecture as repositories of memory, the self, social and private experiences and encounters;
  and poems whose very shapes on the page evoke tension, symmetry, or collapse.

We want poems that challenge and trust their readers; that are complex not through obscurity but precision – poems in which every word, every placement, matters.
We look forward to reading your work – your rooms, your ruins, your bridges of language.
Leo Boix & Stav Poleg, Editors, Magma 95: The Architecture of the Poem 
 
HOW TO SUBMIT 

  The submissions window for ‘Architecture' is open 10th November – 10th December 2025
  We welcome poems that have not been previously published in print, online, or broadcast.
  We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your submission or contact us if it is accepted for publication somewhere else first.
  You may submit up to 4 previously unpublished poems: ONLINE via Submittable in a single Word document, OR BY POST to Magma 95 Submissions, 23 Pine Walk, Carshalton, SM5 4ES. Postal submissions are accepted from the UK and Ireland only. Postal submissions are not acknowledged until a decision is made.
  Please read full Submissions Guidelines here.

Magma 95: Architecture

There is a continuous, mutual impact between the Antarctic and our daily lives, yet the majority of us will never physically be there. Imagined centuries before it was discovered, Antarctica is an idea as much as a geographical place. Owned by no one, it belongs to us all.
Documenting her personal journey to the Antarctic, writer Jenni Diski described it as a place
Antarctica is a paradox, a blank space, a white continent that harbours a dark subglacial world hidden from sunlight for millions of years, a place where all time zones converge, a place of connection, a natural laboratory, an archive in the ice.
This distant frozen landscape has been storied variously by mythic imagination, heroic endeavour and extraordinary scientific discovery. We encourage you to plunge its hidden depths through your poetry. We are excited to read poems which are formally inventive and full of wonder, poetry that takes us on a journey, not just to the Ice, but to a hoped-for future or a place within.
In the words of poet, activist and educator Nikki Giovanni,
Cheryl Moskowitz, Branwell Roberts, Elizabeth Lewis Williams                                                                                  Editors Magma 96: The Antarctic
Cheryl Moskowitz is a US-born, London-based writer and educator, and an editor at Magma Poetry. Her poetry collection The Fossil Issue is forthcoming from Black Cat Poetry Press in 2027. Wayward Thoughts, a CD of her poetry with lutenist Sam Brown, was released in 2025 (EPFH Records). A Proper Goodbye (Troika Books), a middle grade novel, will be published 2026.
Elizabeth Lewis Williams, PhD is a Norwich-based writer and teacher and the author of two books of Antarctic poetry: Deception Island and Erebus (Story Machine 2021, 2022). She is currently completing a work of creative non-fiction that brings together British Antarctic research and personal history.
Branwell Roberts is a British poet living and working in nipaluna/Hobart. They write poetry about Antarctica history, working towards a creative practice PhD at the University of Tasmania. Branwell’s Antarctic writing has recently appeared in The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists anthology Tales from the Poles.
HOW TO SUBMIT
The submissions window for ‘The Antarctic' is open 1st March – 31st March 2026
We welcome poems that have not been previously published in print, online, or broadcast.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your submission or contact us if it is accepted for publication somewhere else first.
You may submit up to 4 previously unpublished poems: ONLINE via Submittable in a single Word document, OR BY POST to Magma 96 Submissions, 23 Pine Walk, Carshalton, SM5 4ES. Postal submissions are accepted from the UK and Ireland only. Postal submissions are not acknowledged until a decision is made.
Please read full Submissions Guidelines here.

The Antarctic

Please send us 18-20 pages of poems
Poems should be typed in single spacing and in 12 font
Start each poem on a new page. Maximum 40 lines per page. If you include a poem sequence in which the poems are 14 lines long or less, then you may put two on a page
All poems must be your original work. They may have been published in magazines (paper or online) and anthologies but not in a pamphlet or collection
Poems must be in the English language or any of its dialects. They must be for adults and must not be translations of someone else’s work
Your pamphlet must have a title which should appear on each page. Please make a title page at the front of the document with the pamphlet title and list of contents
Entries must be anonymous: no name or contact details on any page. Also do not include any previous publication credits or acknowledgements.
The winner will be expected to take part in a launch for the pamphlet
Anyone may enter unless they advise or work for Magma
Simultaneous submissions are allowed but please let us know straight away if your pamphlet has been accepted elsewhere. The fee is not refundable
No changes can be made once you have submitted the pamphlet
In case of unforeseen circumstances Magma reserves the right to change the judge
Deadline: Midnight UK time at the end of the day Monday 1 July 2026

Open poetry pamphlet competition

The West in me wants the mansion
to last. The African knows it cannot.
— Nicole Sealey
This issue of Magma aims to highlight and celebrate the best of Black poetry in the UK and across the African diaspora. By creating a space solely for Black poets, we want to demolish any imagined boxes that Black writers might feel they must create within. What we are asking for is relatively simple: we want your best.
We want poems that centre Black perspectives and that are in dialogue with: the legacies, consequences and lived experiences of those in Africa and the diaspora. We welcome poems across time periods and temporalities that express the under-explored breadth and depth of Black experiences. There are some great poets out there waiting for an opportunity to be seen; here’s your chance.
i knew your name before you had a name
i learnt all of your bars even the freestyles the leaks test me
— Gboyega Odubanjo
So, send them. send your thoughtful political poems, your angry eco-poetry, your surreal lyrics and everything in between — send us your best. Send us the best that the continent and diaspora has to offer. We can't wait to see the rich work that you’re crafting.
The 97th issue of Magma Poetry, edited by Zakia Carpenter-Hall, Elontra Hall, and Nick Makoha PhD, is in partnership with the Obsidian Foundation and focuses on Black poets from across Africa and the diaspora.
We welcome poems from writers of Black African, Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and African American heritage, including those of mixed-Black heritage.
Editors Magma 97: Diasporic Dialogues
Elontra Hall, a Black-American poet based in Northampton, centres much of his work around fatherhood, basketball, relationships and identity. He has been published in HeadFake, Butcher’s Dog (16), Magma (82, 87), Propel (6) Shō (5), Prairie Schooner and had work broadcast on BBC 4’s Poetry Please (Christmas 2022).
Zakia Carpenter-Hall is a writer, tutor, editor and critic who has received fellowships from Obsidian Foundation and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She was on the editorial teams of Magma 82 and Poetry Wales 60.2. Her poetry pamphlet is Into the Same Sound Twice (Seren, 2023). She’s currently a Poet in Residence with Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre.
Nick Makoha, PhD, is a Ugandan poet, playwright, and founder of the Obsidian Foundation. His collections include The New Carthaginians (Penguin, 2025) and Kingdom of Gravity (Peepal Tree, 2017). He has won the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, Ivan Juritz Prize, Poetry London Prize, and the Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors, 2026), and is based in London.
HOW TO SUBMIT
The submissions window for ‘Diasporic Dialogues' is open 1st July – 31st July 2026
We welcome poems that have not been previously published in print, online, or broadcast.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your submission or contact us if it is accepted for publication somewhere else first.
You may submit up to 4 previously unpublished poems: ONLINE via Submittable in a single Word document, OR BY POST to Magma 97 Submissions, 23 Pine Walk, Carshalton, SM5 4ES. Postal submissions are accepted from the UK and Ireland only. Postal submissions are not acknowledged until a decision is made.

Magma Poetry

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