GRAVY

Thinking outside the box, we presented our seventh issue inside a box – as half a dozen Christmas crackers, stuffed with multi-coloured poems about winter by Hannah Copley, Timothy Fox, John Keats, Ali Lewis, Lesya Ukrainka (translated by Valery Reva) & Ruth Wiggins, lovingly typed out on a 1940s Remington Remette.

Our film-themed sixth issue featured poetry about spine-tingling cinema classics – Psycho, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Faust, Rosemary’s Baby, et al – by Abigail Parry, Chrissy Williams, Dzifa Benson and Fran Lock. And as a multimedia treat, it also included QR codes allowing readers to watch short films based on the poetry of Janette Ayachi, Calum Rodger, Ross Sutherland and Julian Stannard, which we screened as part of a spooky night at the Cinema Museum.

Created for a mini-festival of poetry and music at the Crystal Palace Bowl (a glorious outdoor stage that once hosted Bob Marley and Pink Floyd), our fifth issue featured sharp-eyed nature poems from Karen McCarthy Woolf, Ian Humphreys, John McCullough and Hannah Copley, song lyrics from Tara Rai and Kerensa, and artworks by R&F Mo.

There was a nautical bent to our fourth issue, which accompanied a raucous live show on a hundred-year-old ship. It featured poetry from four salty sea-dogs – Abigail Parry, Joelle Taylor, Fran Lock and Oluwaseun Olayiwola – as well as art by Reid Dudley Peirson and creative non-fiction from Hannah Silva.

Our attempt to outdo The Pogues for festive misery, GRAVY #3 included a collection of deliciously downbeat Christmas carols. Inside: poems about music, misspent holidays and much else from Amy Acre, Luke Kennard, Billie Manning and Declan Ryan, with matching illustrations by Lee Hybrid Desire, a poetry quiz, and song lyrics by Alice Grey.

Created for a show taking place a stone’s throw from the Crystal Palace hedge maze, our eclectic second issue was a mini-labyrinth of mazy, knotty by John Clegg, Jade Cuttle, Abigail Parry and Ruth Wiggins, as well as beautifully illustrated translations of Catullus by Isobel Williams.

The very first outpouring of GRAVY included poems by Dzifa Benson, Caroline Bird, Joe Carrick-Varty, Edgar Kunz & Camille Ralphs, original artworks by Lucy Reis & Lee Hybrid Desire, and questionable recipes by Emily Dickinson & TS Eliot.