Transmission #12 is almost with us, but to keep you going until October 13th 2008, here is a small sneak preview:

Michael Symmons Roberts on being a poet and novelist:

Some writers thrive on purity of concentration, but I work best when I’ve got a number of things on the go, so I can play them off against each other, run from one to the other when I’m struggling. I felt that the poetry actively benefited from the novel, because it was freed from the burden of too much narrative. And the novel benefited from the poetry because it didn’t have to be “poetic”. From the outset as a novelist, I didn’t want to write the kind of novel some reviewers expect from poets – rich in description and poor in page-turning storytelling. This is, in fact, not the kind of novel most poets write, as (like me) they’re keen not to fall into that trap, so they write novels with sparse description and lots of complex storytelling. Anyway, in an effort to avoid that trap, I wrote a kind of crime novel (Patrick’s Alphabet) and a book of mainly non-narrative poems (Corpus).

Novelist Ray Robinson on his love of short stories:

I’ll always have a soft spot for short stories, and I consider myself a short story writer first and foremost. I never thought I’d be a novelist, and I certainly didn’t become one because, according to many people, short story collections just don’t sell. It happened by mistake; a short story outgrew itself and became Electricity. So yes, I approached the scenes within The Man Without as short stories, or even pieces of micro fiction, and it really helped with the editing process, because if a scene didn’t work in isolation – if there was any extraneous baggage – then those exiguous words or sentences stood out a mile. The art, of course, is in how you assemble these scenes within the over all story arc. I love getting scenes down to their bare bones; short story writing demands such focus, whereas novels, due to their sheer size, can carry exiguous writing – far too much, usually.

Both Michael Symmons Roberts’ article and Ray Robinson’s interview appear, in full, in Transmission #12.

Our latest issue also features debut novelist Joe Stretch (Friction) on his own unique brand of fiction and up-and-coming writer Chris Killen on his literary idol Richard Brautigan. For more information, and a full list of contents, click on publications.

You can pre-order Transmission #12 at our online shop, where you will also find a limited special offer – Transmission #12 and two mystery back issues for a mere credit-crunch battling £10 (inc. P&P) in our Lucky Dip!