Published three times a year, Prac Crit is an online journal of poetry and criticism, dedicated to reading contemporary poems up close. We publish essays, interviews and the reflections of poets themselves, focused on some of the most important work emerging at the moment – all at the level of the individual poem.

Each issue showcases the work of a handful of poets, with our double-sided features at its heart: one half is an essay rooted in close analysis, usually of a poem from an existing collection; the other half is an interview with the featured poet, inviting them to discuss the ideas and processes behind another poem of theirs, often appearing for the first time in this magazine.

In a literary culture too reliant on vague statements of praise or blame, we believe there’s a renewed need for readerly attention grounded in the specifics of actual poems. In this way, we hope to stay true to both the ‘critical’ and the ‘practical’ promised by our name.

 

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the University College London Knowledge Exchange Fund