NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
Bonfire
ISSN 1745-3607
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Last issue was #3 (2005). The magazine is now defunct.
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This page last updated: 14th December 2007. 		Bonfire #1

A nicely-presented classy production, with a fairly rigid format where stories alternate with a group of 4/5 poems showcasing a poet's work. Most writers are American. The aim of its founding editors, Carrie Berry and Jim Maddocks, is to showcase

the up-and-coming international writers whose fire is destined to brighten the literary world — a journal that presents diverse examples of compelling fiction along with refreshing contemporary poetry.
There is an interesting, if flawed story by Tom Saunders, ROOF WHIRL AWAY, about a psychologically-disturbed girl and her young brother who, due to their parents' absence, is alone to observe her disintegration, which is quite good on atmosphere but rather laboured in the story-line, characters made to act out events that do not quite ring true or remain faithful to the scene-setting or streams of consciousness. FUNERAL GAMES by Kay Sexton is a very effectively-written story about the companionship of a young black DJ and an old white man through their sharing and exchanging of CDs and records:
Now look at them, old white crock getting to the end of his days, black youth with nothing to peg him down but terror of the holes in his head. Testing each other with musical jokes and stuff.
The style is fast, smooth and deft:
Darius slammed out of the door, spilling his coffee over the card table. Next door slammed, then slammed again as he flew out, shrugging into a jacket, and tore down the street as though being chased.
Many of the pieces, for all their good qualities, do not quite manage to tell a decent story, or are unable to fully develop an intriguing situation that has been set up, and, no matter how many over-written images and moody snatches of atmosphere there might be, remain somewhat forced and hollow. There are a few stories from menopausal men and women penning out some hot sweaty fantasies, a particularly effective one being THE GLADRAG RAZZMATAZZ by Bob Arter:
His strapping summer sausage, aging in autumn, rose and stiffened perky, and no thought muddled up her mind as she straddled that ugly blue-eyed killer and impaled herself on him, all her hot sweet-and-sour juices dripping as she gasped and moaned forgotten lyrics of the body.
The poetry is generally fine, occasionally rising above the usual standard fare; here, for example, is a striking image from ANNIVERSARY by David Durham:
	Sipping water from the backyard hose,
	I watch my father's ghost
	pause at the open door of the tool shed.

	He hasn't come to haunt me.
	He's too busy searching with fingertips
	for his face in the fold of a hinge.
There are some interesting poems by Bryan Murphy, with quite an effective one on the closing stages of a marathon and another on middle-age blues; a nicely-done prose poem from him, SOCCER LINGUISTICS, with snippets of memories in diverse geographical locations, recalls when, in China, he imbibed
	wisdom from a monk in the universal language: "You Ingalish—
	Bob Charlatan, Allah Sheila, Lee Pool, Tot Nam."
There is also some interesting, slightly off-beam blues-type poetry from DB Cox. In HOUSE OF CARDS he writes
	just give me things
	i can depend on
	red wine, old times
	the repetition of a song
All in all, a praiseworthy magazine with serious intent, containing a wealth of material, and the occasional nugget.

reviewer: Alan Hardy.