Stand

About Stand

Stand is a quarterly literary magazine of poetry, prose and criticism — founded in 1952 by the poet Jon Silkin with his £5 redundancy money, and published from Leeds in close association with the School of English at the University of Leeds. In its 70-plus years, Stand has published early work by many writers who went on to become established figures — Ken Smith, Tony Harrison, Michael Hamburger, Douglas Dunn, Jeffrey Wainwright and George MacBeth among them — and has played a major role in bringing writers in translation to an English-speaking audience. Its website is standmagazine.org.

Stand first appeared in London, then moved to Leeds when Silkin became Gregory Fellow in Poetry, moved again to Newcastle in 1965, and returned to Leeds in 1999 after Silkin's death. The School of English hosted the magazine's 60th birthday celebrations in 2012.

Founded in 1952 with £5

Stand first appeared in 1952, when Jon Silkin used his £5 redundancy money — received after being fired for trying to organise his fellow manual workers into a union — to found a magazine which would "stand" against injustice and oppression, and "stand" for the role that the arts, poetry and fiction in particular, could and should play in that fight.

Silkin, born in London in 1930, had worked as a filing clerk, journalist, National Serviceman, gravedigger and cleaner before dedicating himself to poetry. The £5 that founded Stand became one of the great origin stories of British literary publishing.

Jon Silkin's Magazine

Silkin edited Stand from its founding — with a hiatus from 1957 to 1960, when lack of funds forced him to cease production — until his death in November 1997. A poet of over thirty collections, a critic of the First World War poets, and a translator, Silkin made the magazine the expression of his left-wing, socially engaged, determinedly internationalist position.

Stand championed writers from across the world, particularly Eastern Europe and nations under Soviet rule — publishing translations and essays — and "stood" for an alternative culture at odds with the Movement and its concerns. His 1973 anthology Poetry of the Committed Individual gathered fifty-seven poets from around the world, twenty-seven in translation.

London to Leeds to Newcastle and Back

Stand first appeared in London. In 1958 Silkin was awarded the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Leeds — one of the youngest Fellows, aged 28 — and in 1960 relaunched the magazine from the School of English. In 1965, with funding from Northeast Arts, he moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he lived until his death. After Silkin's death, Stand returned to Leeds in 1999.

Today Stand is an independent company, but works in close association with the School of English at the University of Leeds — where the archives of Stand are held alongside the Jon Silkin Archive.

Early Work of Great Writers

In its decades of publication, Stand has published early work by many writers who went on to become established figures: Ken Smith, Tony Harrison, Michael Hamburger, Douglas Dunn, Jeffrey Wainwright and George MacBeth are just a few. Early contributors included Gregory Fellows James Kirkup, Thomas Blackburn and William Price Turner.

The magazine's commitment to new writing — "the search for inventive or radical or experimental work goes on" — has never wavered: Stand appears quarterly and continues to feature some of the best in new writing, poetry, fiction and criticism.

Writers in Translation

The magazine has played a major role in bringing writers in translation to an English-speaking audience — a legacy of Silkin's internationalism. From Eastern European poets under Soviet rule to contemporary world literature, Stand's pages have been a window onto poetry beyond Britain's shores.

That commitment to translation, to the "committed individual" across borders, remains one of the magazine's defining characteristics.

Stand Today

From Jon Silkin's £5 in 1952 to today's quarterly, Stand has stood — against injustice, for the arts, for the committed individual — for over seventy years. The School of English at Leeds was proud to host its 60th birthday celebrations in 2012; the magazine continues its mission into its eighth decade.

Quarterly in print and online at standmagazine.org, Stand remains what Silkin founded: the magazine that stands for poetry's role in the fight for a better world.

The Stand Archive at Leeds

The archives of Stand are now held at the University of Leeds — a fitting home, given that Silkin relaunched the magazine from the university's School of English in 1960, after taking up the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry there in 1958. The Stand Archive exists separately from the Jon Silkin Archive, though much of the correspondence in the Silkin papers relates to the magazine, so intertwined were the man and his creation.

The archive is a record of more than six decades of independent literary publishing: correspondence with contributors, editorial papers, production files — the working documents of a magazine that survived on shoestring budgets, arts funding and its editor's determination. For researchers of post-war British poetry, it is an indispensable resource.

That the archive sits in Leeds, where Silkin studied for a degree in English literature while holding the fellowship, closes a circle: the magazine that began in London in 1952, on a £5 redundancy payment, found its institutional home in the city where it was reborn in 1960.

Northern House Press and the War Poets

In 1965 Silkin founded the Northern House Press, extending his publishing activities beyond the magazine. He was, among much else, one of the great anthologists of the poetry of the First World War: Out of Battle: The Poetry of the Great War appeared in 1972, and he edited several anthologies and books of criticism on the war poets, lecturing and teaching on the subject widely in Britain and abroad — in the United States, Israel and Japan.

He also edited Poetry of the Committed Individual: A 'Stand' Anthology of Poetry in 1973, drawing directly on the magazine's pages to make the case for poetry as an engaged, political art — the 'committed individual' of the title being Silkin's ideal of the poet as citizen.

Silkin edited Stand, with a hiatus from 1957 to 1960, until his death in November 1997. He was working with Cargo Press on his collection Testament Without Breath at the time of his death — a poet and editor active to the very end, and a magazine that has continued, from the School of English at Leeds, into the twenty-first century.

Leeds and Newcastle: The Anthony Blond Years

After its 1960 relaunch from the School of English at Leeds, Stand moved with Silkin to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1965, when Northeast Arts offered funding — and it was there, under the imprint of Anthony Blond, that the magazine put down its deepest roots. A near-complete run of Stand Magazine, Leeds and Newcastle, Anthony Blond, 1960–2000 — 151 volumes — tells the story of four decades of continuous publication.

The move to Newcastle was decisive. Silkin lived in the city until his death, and the magazine became one of the great institutions of northern English literary life: serious, internationalist, and stubbornly independent, publishing poetry, fiction, criticism and translation to a standard few little magazines could match.

That the magazine 'continues today, edited from the School of English at the University of Leeds' — as one auction catalogue put it — is a testament to the foundations Silkin laid: first in London in 1952, then in Leeds in 1960, then in Newcastle from 1965, and now back in Leeds, where the archive and the magazine's institutional memory reside.