The High Window
Overview
The High Window is a British quarterly review of poetry, published online and listed in this directory from London, England. Founded in 2016, it publishes work in English by new and established poets from the United Kingdom and around the world. The journal describes its aims as wide-ranging and non-partisan. Each full quarterly issue combines an eclectic selection of new poetry with a literary essay, a selection of poems in translation, poetry reviews and occasional features, and the journal also publishes frequent supplementary posts in the months between its full issues. It works in association with its publishing outlet, The High Window Press, which issues collections by poets its editor considers up and coming or unduly neglected.
Founding and Early Issues
The High Window's first issue appeared on 1 March 2016. For its first twelve issues the journal was co-edited by the poets David Cooke and Anthony Costello, a partnership that covered the quarterly run from 2016 to 2018. The pattern of the journal was established early: substantial selections of new poems, a featured poet strand, critical writing and translation in every issue. Its summer 2016 issue, the journal's second, carried a featured American poet, Nicole Callihan, whose five new poems were introduced through an unedited email conversation with Costello conducted across the Atlantic on 1 April that year. The exchange, published as part of the feature, set the tone for a journal interested as much in how poets talk about their art as in the poems themselves.
The featured-poet strand continued as a regular element of the early issues, with previous featured poets listed and revisited on the journal's site, giving readers a cumulative sense of the editors' tastes across the first years of publication.
Editors
After the first twelve issues, The High Window continued under the sole editorship of David Cooke. Cooke was born in the United Kingdom, his family comes from the west of Ireland, and he won a Gregory Award in 1977. He has published poems, translations and reviews in the United Kingdom, Ireland and beyond. His earlier collections were gathered in A Slow Blues: New and Selected Poems, published by The High Window Press in 2015, and he went on to publish further collections including A Murmuration and After Hours. For many years he was Head of Languages at a comprehensive school in Cleethorpes, later earned his living as an online bookseller, and, to coincide with his seventieth birthday in 2023, Littoral Press published his Collected Poems. He has described moving from Grimsby to Swindon to be closer to his family.
Anthony Costello, the founding co-editor, is a gardener, editor and writer. His first collection, The Mask, was published by Lapwing in 2014, and his second, Angles & Visions, a collection of cinema-related poems, was published by The High Window Press in 2016. He edited the anthology Four American Poets for the press, co-translated Alain-Fournier's poems for Carcanet, and served as associate publisher at The High Window Press as well as co-editor of the journal from 2016 to 2018.
Content of Each Issue
A full issue of The High Window is built from several recurring components. The largest is the poetry itself: the journal promises a lively and eclectic mix, drawn from poets at every stage of their careers and from many countries, though all published in English. Alongside the poems, each issue contains a literary essay, giving the journal a critical dimension beyond reviewing. A selection of poems in translation appears in each issue, reflecting Cooke's own background in languages and his work as a translator. Poetry reviews cover new collections, and occasional features, such as the featured poet conversations of the early issues, complete the format. Between quarterly issues, supplementary posts keep the site active with additional poems, articles and reviews, so that the journal functions partly as a continuously updated poetry website and partly as a conventional quarterly.
The High Window Press
The journal's associated publishing outlet, The High Window Press, publishes an increasingly wide range of collections by poets who are up and coming or who, in the editor's opinion, may have been unduly neglected. The press's list grew directly out of the journal's editorial work. Its titles include Cooke's own A Slow Blues in 2015, Costello's Angles & Visions in 2016, and the anthology Four American Poets, edited by Costello, which presented four contemporary American poets to British readers in a single volume of 129 pages. The relationship between journal and press is reciprocal: the journal discovers and features poets, and the press gives some of them book-length publication, while the books in turn draw readers back to the quarterly.
Reviews and Critical Reception
Reviewing is central to The High Window's identity as a review of poetry rather than simply a poetry magazine. Its reviews are substantial critical essays rather than brief notices, and they circulate beyond the journal itself: reviewers have republished High Window reviews on their own sites with the editors' permission, thanking Cooke and Costello for the use of pieces that link back to the journal's many poems, articles and reviews. The press's books have likewise been reviewed in other poetry outlets, including London Grip, which examined both Costello's cinema poems and his Four American Poets anthology in detail. This web of reviewing, reposting and cross-referencing is characteristic of the British small-press poetry world, in which journals sustain one another's visibility.
Translation
The commitment to poems in translation in every issue gives The High Window an international dimension unusual in a journal of its size. Its founding editor's professional life was spent teaching languages, its co-editor co-translated a French poet for a major poetry publisher, and the journal's pages have carried translated work alongside the featured American poets and British contributors of its early issues. Translation is presented not as a special theme but as a standing part of what a poetry quarterly should contain, on the same footing as new poems, essays and reviews.
Readership
The High Window addresses readers of contemporary poetry who want criticism and translation alongside new poems: the audience served in print by longer-established quarterlies, reached here through a free online journal. Contributors range from poets publishing early work to established names, and the journal's non-partisan editorial stance is intended to keep its pages open across the stylistic divisions of British poetry. Its supplementary posts between issues suit readers who follow poetry online continuously, while the quarterly rhythm preserves the sense of an edited, collectable issue.
Availability and Access
The High Window is read online through its own website, where the current issue, supplementary posts and the archive of earlier issues and features are freely available to any reader with an internet connection. The associated press's books are physical objects in the conventional small-press manner: collections such as Angles & Visions were issued as paperbacks with standard ISBNs, priced for the poetry market and sold through the usual online booksellers, and Cooke's Collected Poems was likewise made available via Amazon. The journal itself charges neither readers nor, in the manner of most literary journals, depends on subscription income; its continuity rests on its editor's labour.
Place in British Poetry Publishing
Launched in 2016, The High Window belongs to the generation of online journals that took over functions once performed by print quarterlies: discovering poets, reviewing collections seriously, publishing poetry in translation and hosting essays and conversations about the art. Its continuity under one editor after an initial co-edited phase, its associated press publishing full collections, and its archive of featured poets and reviews have made it a durable fixture of the British poetry landscape, run on editorial commitment rather than institutional funding.
