Alembic was a poetry magazine established by Peter Barry, Ken Edwards, and Robert Gavin Hampson, which appeared eight times during the 1970s.[1] It existed between 1973 and 1978.[2] The magazine was based in London.[2]
History and profile
The first issue appeared in 1973: it was a collection of poems by Barry, Edwards, Hampson and Jim Stewart with graphic work by John Simpson, Robert Snell and Sibani Raychaudhuri. The work was printed on different colours and sizes of paper - and contained in a plastic bag.
Paul Buck, Opal Nations, Jeff Nuttall, Maxim Jakubowski, David Miller, the Canadian writer Greg Hollingshead and James Sherry, who was also associated with LANGUAGE poetry. This issue was also the first to be offset. (Like Alembic 4. it had a wrap around cover rather than card.) Alembic 6 (Summer 1977)was again solely edited by Hampson. It included further work by contributors to earlier issues. The featured poet was the Australian poet David Miller: as well as poems and essays by Miller, there was also poetry by Robert Lax and a reprint of work by Charles Madge, on both of whom Miller had written. In addition, there was also work by Rosmarie Waldrop, Tom Leonard, Elaine Randell and Barry MacSweeney.[8]Alembic 7 (Spring 1978), edited by Edwards and Hampson out of Lower Green Farm, was the 'Assemblage Issue', assembled by inviting a range of poets and visual artists to provide the contents. It included work by Jeremy Adler, Paul Buck, Herbert Burke, Paula Claire, cris cheek, Bob Cobbing, Glenda George, Robert Sheppard, E. E. Vonna-Michel, Lawrence Upton and others. A particular feature of this issue was that every cover was different: they were hand-printed by Vonna-Michel with a rubber-stamp used for the title.[9]
Alembic 9 (to be edited by Hampson) was promised, but never appeared: Edwards had begun to publish Reality Studios as a slimmer, faster and more frequent publication. This eventually metamorphosed (through an amalgamation with Wendy Mulford's Street Editions) into Reality Street, which has been a major publisher of experimental poetry and prose since the 1980s.
An interview with Hampson and Edwards by Sophie Seita, originally published in mimeo, is included in Jacket2 as 'the transatlantic axis of alembic'.
References
^David Miller and Richard Price, British Poetry Magazines, 1914-2000, are the primary source for information on the bibliographic and printing history.
