The Poetry Review
The Poetry Review is the quarterly magazine of The Poetry Society in the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is published in English and edited by the poet Wayne Holloway-Smith.
The magazine began in 1912, taking over from the members’ news magazine called the Poetical Gazette. Its first editor was Harold Monro, who was replaced after a year. Stephen Phillips edited from 1913 to 1915, and Galloway Kyle led the Review from 1916 to 1947. Kyle kept the magazine running through the London Blitz and aimed to make poetry something the everyday reader could enjoy. He wanted poetry to be a shared heritage and wrote that, although looking forward is useful, looking back is often essential for poets living in difficult times. During the wars, the Review published work from service members and eye-witness accounts, and its readership grew a lot—from about 1,000 readers before World War I to around 6,000 per issue by the end of World War II.
In 1923, Alice Hunt Bartlett became American Associate Editor, and the Review carried significant content from the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. The American poetry journal Poetry was a related project at the same time.
Muriel Spark ran the Review from 1947 to 1949 and introduced a fee for contributors, but she was removed amid tensions over her radical views. From 1952 to 1962 an editorial board led by Thomas Moult steered the magazine. Derek Parker handed the helm to avant-garde poet Eric Mottram in 1970, who was followed by Roger Garfitt and Peter Forbes from 1985 to 2002. Other later editors included Adrian Henri, Andrew Motion and Mick Imlah. Fiona Sampson was the editor from 2005 to 2012. After a series of guest editors, Maurice Riordan became editor in 2013 for four years, followed by Emily Berry in 2017, and then Wayne Holloway-Smith in 2022.
The Review began as a monthly magazine, became bi-monthly from 1915 to 1951, and has been published quarterly since 1952. It has featured work by major poets such as Thomas Hardy, Rupert Brooke, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Philip Larkin and Allen Ginsberg. To mark the Poetry Society’s centenary in 2009, Carcanet Press published A Century of Poetry Review, a 400-page book edited and introduced by the Review’s editor at the time.
In 2014 the publication returned to the shorter title The Poetry Review. The current editor is Wayne Holloway-Smith, who followed Emily Berry (Spring 2022) after Maurice Riordan (Spring 2017). The magazine appears in March, June, September and December and is given to subscribing members of The Poetry Society.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:58 (CET).