NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

I have not encountered this magazine before, but it is obviously well-established, and many of its contributors have track records. It has, as well as the poems themselves, an initial page of notes on contributors and a final page listing books received (both, I have to say, in a type-face as evilly-illegible and cramped as any I have seen), and it has a drawing of a "portal" at Tintagel on its front cover (again, I must say, rather crude). The name of the magazine is in attractive Celtic-type design, and there are other suggestions of what I shall in my semi-ignorance have to call New Ageism The contents are not commitedly New Age — had they been so, it would have made them distinctive, though not particularly appealing to me personally. But if more magazines were tarred with distinctive brushes, would-be contributors would more clearly know where they stand. Perhaps, indeed, there is more specialism out there than I am aware of.

The poems themselves are varied in style and content, though there is a strong vein of landscape/nature writing, and more than a little faded Romanticism in the vocabulary: dim, tranquil, pale, misty put in appearances, sometimes repeatedly, and there is a lot of sun, moon, silver and earth about. Not many poems escape these unwelcome Romantic clutches, so when Geoff Stevens, in ROACHES, writes:

	We can see Tittesworth from here
	two-dimensional and shrunken by drought
	a pale blue rag of a reservoir
	thrown down in the valley and leaking slowly
	into the Caldon Canal

	As the dim cobwebbed  eyes register a little more light
	the derelict house spreads her bridal veil of snowdrops
	before the trees' brachioli breathe the winter sun

	The keeper of the old years flame
	He lights new candles in the rain

	Winter winds blast the breakers five lines deep
	and whip the top foam to spiral deaths.

	looks
	rust what
	holds into
	one piece crumble
	of monument right
	on

	Midwinter's rising sun awakes,
	Flaming, above the hill
	Marking  the distant eastern rim,
	Banishing night-time's chill...

	I enter through a grudging door
	and walk into a room via the wall.
	I sit in a chair and drift to the floor
	as a small boy walks through my legs
	and skips his way down the hall
	to ask when I'll be here...

In a script no bigger than 12point, 'Pantheistic/ ecological' subscriptions to MOONSTONE are invited on its back page. This rather low key reference to the magazine's character is reflected in the generous range of writers and subjects included in issue 96. There is strength in this diversity. The contents of MOONSTONE retain a distinct 'open air' feel, as exemplified by the first piece, inspired by St. Kilda, a part of Britain where the air is certainly bracing. It's unclear and unimportant whether Kenneth Steven's poem is actually set on the islands, or whether it is capturing their power to inspire a musician, over 70 years after the evacuation:

	He lay there in the small hours before the dawn,
	And the Atlantic swelled through the room,
	Bringing in its fingers stories of far away,
	Of long ago, of make believe.

			Mercurial, sunk puddles stain,
	reflecting titans doubled-up in pain,
	long miles from farm, hunt lodge or grange.

			The first fires of romance
	were touching her with its forlorn dream.

	The blurred expanse of sea
	with its archipelago
	linked by serpentine bridges .
	their battlefields of rock
	corpsed with single-story houses
	and lone seacraft.

	Fingers could idly drift
	down stream-gully,
	groove-tracing, probing cleft.

The magazine features pieces like Anne Mawer's BOLAND TRYST, at the more traditional end of the spectrum, as well as intriguing pieces by J.C. Hartley and Steve Sneyd. Its recommendations and listings are kept concise, to maximize the number of publications and writers mentioned and MOONSTONE is reasonably priced, too.

MOONSTONE #97, Imbolc 2005, gives an example of simplicity employed in the service of poetry. Its relatively inexpensive A5 production belies the many poems sandwiched between the light card covers and the range of poetry includes quite a few notable English names.

As to be expected from a spring issue many of the poems are concerned with the seasonal change from winter to spring and the inspiration to be found in the oldest of themes. In WINTER SCENE, Michael Newman describes:

	abnormal light; snow
	Which has given morning
	A pristine beauty.

	snowflakes blossom

	pert as ballerinas

Outside of the seasonal theme is a preoccupation with ordinary things, CAT SITTING, by Catherine Jeffrey, depicts a developing relationship between animal and human, as a moment caught in time, with the final reward given as

	a silent purr.

	...to a child an emblem of the true pathetic

Even the poems title removes any air of mystique that a French title might perhaps bestow.

Taken together, MOONSTONE 97 makes for interesting reading with plenty of variety in the material's arrangement.

MOONSTONE's bowing out with issue 100. However, editors Talitha Clare and Robin Brooks do have plans for a best of anthology and possibly another magazine in the future. As the date suggests, many poems within have pagan/moon themes. Juliet Wilson's MYTHOLOGIES OF THE MOON starts and ends with:

	New moon is she virgin.
	Full moon she is mother.
	Waning she is wise,
	healer and transformer.

	...Plant deep the shrieking poisoned mandrake root,
	Then draw from mother earth new season's fruit.

 
	Leggy models on spring's catwalk
	Daffodils sway their willowy hips
	and pout their luscious lemony lips
	The turn their heads towards the sun
	the paparazzi's flashing guns.

If you like poems on pagan/ecological themes, MOONSTONE's for you. Contact the editors for more details about the proposed best of anthologies.