Envoi Magazine

Overview

Envoi Magazine is a British poetry magazine founded in 1957 and now published by Cinnamon Press from Blaenau Ffestiniog in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It is one of Britain's longest-running poetry magazines, publishing new poems alongside featured poets, long poems, interviews, articles and extensive reviews of new poetry collections. In an ecosystem in which most little magazines last a few years at most, Envoi's survival across nearly seven decades makes it an institution of British poetry publishing in its own right.

The magazine's character is defined by range and by reviewing. Each issue gathers poems by dozens of contributors — established names, small-press regulars and poets appearing in print for the first or second time — and then devotes serious space to assessing the flood of new collections and pamphlets that constitutes contemporary poetry publishing. That second function is rarer and more valuable than it sounds: for poets published by small presses, a considered review in a magazine such as Envoi may be the only critical attention a book receives.

Founding in 1957 and Early Years

Envoi was founded in 1957, in the first great post-war flowering of British little magazines, when cheap printing put a poetry journal within reach of determined editors working outside London's commercial publishing houses. A surviving printer's proof of Envoi issue 6, dated 1958 and edited by Iain I. Hird, shows the young magazine already publishing a wide spread of contributors from Edinburgh, including Gael Turnbull, a central figure in post-war British poetic modernism. The early Envoi was therefore part of the network of small magazines through which new British poetry circulated before it reached book form.

The magazine carried the International Standard Serial Number 0013-9394, a low, early number that itself testifies to the title's longevity in library catalogues. Through successive editors and homes, the numbering continued unbroken into the twenty-first century: issue 166 appeared in November 2013, issue 168 in October 2014 and issue 171 in October 2015, by which time a single issue cost five pounds. A poetry magazine that can count its issues in the high one-hundreds has published several generations of British poets.

The Cinnamon Press Era

Envoi is now published by Cinnamon Press, the independent Welsh publisher founded by Jan Fortune. Cinnamon began in 2005 in a tiny village at the foot of the Moelwyn mountains in Snowdonia, starting with a home-printed poetry magazine and two poetry collections, one of which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Poetry, the press insists, remains at the heart of everything it does, and taking on a magazine with Envoi's history fitted that founding purpose exactly: Cinnamon is based at Blaenau Ffestiniog, beneath the same Moelwyn mountains, in Gwynedd.

Under Cinnamon, Envoi kept its established shape — poems first, then articles and reviews — while becoming part of a wider poetry economy of collections, pamphlets, competitions and mentoring run by the same small, largely volunteer-supported, not-for-profit press. Jan Fortune herself appears in Envoi's pages as a reviewer, assessing new collections alongside the magazine's regular critical contributors. The arrangement gives the magazine something little magazines rarely enjoy: a publisher whose book list, competitions and readership reinforce the journal rather than competing with it.

What an Issue Contains

The contents of Envoi's Cinnamon-era issues show a consistent architecture. The bulk of each issue is new poetry: issue 170, in June 2015, for example, carried poems by more than forty contributors, among them Jean Atkin, Bob Beagrie, Clare Best, Neil Elder, Cliff Forshaw, Sarah James, Will Kemp, Richie McCaffery, Angela Readman, Anna Saunders, Myra Schneider and Paul Stephenson. Issue 171, that October, published a similar number, mixing British and Irish poets with work in translation.

Around the poems sit the magazine's distinguishing features. A featured poet receives extended presentation; a featured long poem is given room to unfold at a length most magazines cannot accommodate; and interviews and articles — on translating Ilse Aichinger, tributes to poets such as Joel Lane and Anne Cluysenaar, an interview with Janet Sutherland — place the new writing in a critical and historical frame. Translations have been a recurring strand, including Italian poetry translated by teams working with the editor, reflecting Envoi's long-standing openness to poetry beyond Britain.

Reviews and Critical Function

Envoi's reviews section is among the most extensive in British poetry magazines. Regular reviewers in the 2010s included R. V. Bailey, Jan Fortune, Roger Elkin, Paul McDonald and Patrick Lodge, each typically assessing several collections at a time, so that a single issue might review twenty or more new books — from major-publisher collections to pamphlets from the smallest presses. Reviewers also marked the passing of poets and the appearance of selected and collected editions, giving the section the feel of a running chronicle of the poetry world.

That chronicle matters disproportionately in poetry, where national newspaper reviewing covers only a handful of titles a year. For a poet with a first pamphlet from a regional press, Envoi's pages have often been the place where their work was first taken seriously in print, quoted, compared and placed in a lineage. For librarians, booksellers and other poets, the reviews pages function as a buying and reading guide to a publishing scene too large and too scattered for any individual to survey alone.

Frequency, Format and Price

Envoi is a print magazine. In its Cinnamon period of the mid-2010s it appeared three times a year, with issues dated February, June and October — issues 169, 170 and 171 followed that pattern through 2015 — while listings in poetry submission guides have also described it as appearing twice a year, in spring and autumn. Single issues were priced at five pounds in 2014 and 2015, with subscriptions handled through Cinnamon Press and its Envoi website, envoipoetry.com.

The format is a substantial paperback journal rather than a slim magazine: dozens of poems, a long poem, articles and a large reviews section require, and receive, a book-like extent. That physical seriousness is part of the title's identity. Envoi is made to be kept on poetry shelves alongside the collections it reviews, and complete runs are held by poetry libraries precisely because its contents pages read as a census of who was publishing British poetry in any given year.

Contributors and Community

Across its long life Envoi has published poets at every career stage. Its 2010s contents pages mingle Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize shortlistees with workshop poets publishing their first accepted poem, and that mixture is deliberate little-magazine democracy: the poem, not the reputation, earns the page. Recurring contributors — poets such as Roger Elkin, Will Kemp, Kathleen M. Quinlan, Mandy Pannett and Anna Saunders, who appear across successive issues — give the magazine a recognisable company of writers, while first-time names in every issue keep it open.

The magazine also sustains a community around itself through Cinnamon's wider activities: poetry competitions judged and published by the press, launches, courses and mentoring. A poet might first encounter the Cinnamon world through Envoi, submit to a pamphlet competition, and later publish a collection with the press — a pathway from magazine contributor to book author that mirrors the route countless British poets have taken through little magazines since Envoi began in 1957.

Digital Presence

Envoi's digital presence has been deliberately modest and print-centred. The magazine maintained its own website at envoipoetry.com, where Cinnamon listed current and recent issues with full contents — every poet, article and review named — and single-issue prices, while Cinnamon Press's main website, cinnamonpress.co.uk, carries the press's poetry list, competitions and news into which Envoi fits. Contents listings online serve a practical purpose for a reviewing magazine: poets, publishers and librarians can check whether a collection has been reviewed and order the relevant issue.

Cinnamon itself now operates as a small not-for-profit publisher with a tiny volunteer-heavy team, selling direct to readers and running an active programme of online launches and writing courses. Envoi benefits from that infrastructure without surrendering its identity as a print journal; the magazine's contribution to the digital world is chiefly discoverability — making nearly seventy years of poetry publishing findable — rather than digital-first publication.

Significance in British Poetry

Envoi's significance is the significance of endurance. Founded in 1957, when British poetry was still dominated by a handful of London publishers, it has outlived almost all of its contemporaries and most of its successors, continuing — through changes of editor, publisher and home, and finally under a small Welsh independent press in Blaenau Ffestiniog — to do the two things poetry most needs from its magazines: publish new poems generously, and review new books seriously.

For poets, Envoi remains a real address: a magazine that might print their work, review their pamphlet and place them in company that stretches back to the modernists of the 1950s. For readers and researchers, its unbroken run is an archive of British poetic taste across seven decades. Few magazines founded as 1950s little magazines can still be bought, submitted to and argued with today; Envoi can.