Michael Mackmin
Michael Mackmin, born in 1941 in Croydon, London, is a British poet and editor. He founded The Rialto, a poetry magazine, and remains its editor. His first collection, The Play of Rainbow, appeared in 1970 after Cape Goliard Press accepted it—their first unsolicited manuscript. His poems have appeared in Transatlantic Review and The Shop: A Magazine of Poetry. Other books include The Connemara Shore (1978). In 1994 his words accompanied photographs by Patrick Sutherland for a Maidstone exhibition about Kent. Twenty-Three Poems (2006) and From Here to There (2011), both published by HappenStance, followed; From Here to There was praised as a beautiful little book. AND (Poems 1920-2017) appeared in 2017.
As a founder editor of The Rialto in 1984, Mackmin helped publish a wide range of writers, including many from East Anglia, with contributors such as Margaret Atwood and Carol Ann Duffy. The Rialto is regarded as a leading UK poetry magazine and helped carry on the East Anglian poetry tradition after Samphire. George Szirtes’s poem "Meeting Austerlitz" first appeared in The Rialto (issue 51). With Matt Howard, Mackmin started the RSPB & The Rialto Nature Poetry Competition. The Rialto won the East Anglian Book Award 2022 for exceptional contribution. In 2023, he edited Poetry with an Axe to Grind: A Celebration of The Rialto’s 100th issue, described by the TLS as a quirky affair.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:55 (CET).