Smiths Knoll 10

Smiths Knoll 10 (1995) by Various
Good | ISBN: none listed
Condition: Good
As sold by Crappy Old Books

There are magazines that exist to keep one abreast of trends, fashions, and the latest urgent cultural noises, and then there are magazines like Smiths Knoll, which seem serenely unconcerned with all that and continue, with admirable stubbornness, to publish literature as though literature were still something worth quietly attending to. A radical notion, perhaps, but an appealing one.

Issue Number 10, from 1995, belongs to that honourable species of small literary journal whose ambitions are modest in scale and immense in spirit. It gathers together work by various contributors and offers the reader a chance to wander, page by page, through a little republic of poems, reflections, and literary voices. Some pieces may be thoughtful, some mischievous, some elusive enough to require a second reading, and some so precise that they briefly improve one’s opinion of the human race.

The title remains a delight. Smiths Knoll sounds less like a magazine and more like a place where one might go to think, perhaps somewhere in the English countryside where the wind has opinions and the hedgerows look as though they have inspired verse before. It is the sort of title that promises seriousness without pomposity and literary intent without metropolitan self-importance. One imagines it being read by people who own good coats and know how to make tea properly.

Small press journals like this have always performed the useful cultural work that larger, shinier publications often neglect. They make room for voices not yet streamlined for the market, for writing that is subtle, odd, difficult, moving, or simply too good to be left homeless. They are where literary culture keeps its more interesting side alive, away from publicity departments and fashionable commotion. In that sense, Smiths Knoll is not merely a magazine but a small act of resistance against vulgarity.

Seen now, a 1995 issue such as this also carries the charm of an earlier literary rhythm. This was still a world in which new writing was encountered in physical journals, on paper, by people prepared to sit still long enough to read it. One did not swipe past a poem while waiting for a kettle to boil. One actually read the thing. Whether civilisation has improved since then is a matter best left open.

There is, too, something gently comic and deeply admirable about the enterprise. Poetry magazines are not generally assembled by men in sharp suits calculating market domination. They are made by people who continue, against all available evidence, to believe that carefully arranged words matter. It is a wonderfully impractical faith, and the world is probably better for it.

This copy is in good condition, showing the ordinary signs of age and handling but remaining sound, tidy, and perfectly ready for another thoughtful reader. It has survived rather well, much like the small-press spirit it represents.

A fine item for collectors of literary magazines, poetry journals, and small press publications, or for anyone who enjoys discovering writing outside the great roar of the mainstream. Smiths Knoll 10 offers the quiet pleasure of intelligent company between covers, which is really all a literary magazine ever needs to do.

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