Nigel,
along with his brother Geoff, used to edit a magazine called the Rue Bella in the early noughties,
and one reason I know is because I was featured in it – twice. They published
poets like Brian Patten, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ruth Padel and Michael Horovitz – and
me. I still can’t believe, looking back, that I managed to get to be in such
esteemed company, but that’s the thing: Despite attracting some of the biggest
names to their magazine, Nigel and Geoff were always very open to and supportive
of writers who were complete unknowns but who maybe showed some kind of promise,
and I have to say it was a definite shot in the arm for me at the time and
really kept me going.
And
though it’s taken me a while, having kept on going, here I am, thirteen years
later, with my first book, an 80 page tome that contains two of the poems
originally published in the Rue Bella
– ‘My Bad Side’ from volume seven and
‘Security Camera’ from volume nine.
The
book – entitled Being With Me Will HelpYou Learn – is out this month via Listen Softly London Press and can be
pre-ordered here:
Altogether
there are 56 pieces – both poetry and flash-fiction – that have been published
in all kinds of literary mags, from august journals such as Envoi, Fire and Iota to cool zines like the
Illustrated Ape, Rising and PUSH.
And
when I think about it, the Rue Bella
really was a combination of the two: definitely an ‘august journal’ but cool as
well – the best of both worlds, in fact – and though all good things come to an
end, as the Rue Bella did in 2003, it
definitely isn’t forgotten. I have all nine of the volumes at home – six to
nine I bought at the time and one to five I bought from Amazon – and recently,
as I leafed through them and stopped at various points to read poems, I was
impressed with how uniformly excellent they were, always well-written and
profound but accessible too, and it was interesting to see names of poets who
would have been unknown at the time but have gone on to build substantial
reputations – Ben Myers, for instance, being one very notable example. I’m sure
the Rue Bella has been acknowledged
many times in various poets’ books already – and in this way lives on – but now,
at last, after all these years, it appears on the acknowledgment page of mine,
and I’d like to thank Nigel and Geoff for that shot in the arm their both
august and cool journal gave to me at the time that kept me going and helped no
end to bring me to this point.
Thomas McColl
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