New Yorkshire Writing
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New Yorkshire Writing was a UK based literary quarterly that briefly enjoyed one of the largest circulations of what is commonly called a "little magazine". This was entirely thanks to it being distributed as a free insertion in 13,000 copies of the "What’s On" arts listing magazine that was published by the Yorkshire Arts Association (YAA).
The format of the magazine was tabloid, an uncommon style for a literary magazine, notably excepting the contemporaneous and highly lauded London magazine, Bananas [1], edited by Emma Tennant [2].
The YAA also financed New Yorkshire Writing, establishing the magazine in the wake of a contentious closure of Yorkshire Review, a literary quarterly that it published in 1976. As well as funding the magazine’s print production, the YAA contracted the editor and the designer, Chris Rhodes, and provided a budget to offer reasonable payments to all the contributors.
The editor of New Yorkshire Writing was Jay Jeff Jones, an expatriate American playwright and poet who had previously been associate editor of Wordworks [3] [4], the Manchester based experimental writing magazine published by Michael Butterworth and a contibutor to Transatlantic Review.
The first issue of New Yorkshire Writing appeared in Summer 1977 and the final issue, number 8, in Spring 1979. The contents’ emphasis was intended to feature work; short fiction, poetry and reviews, from or related to writers and publishers with a Yorkshire connection. In practice this qualification was liberally interpreted to allow writers that were temporarily resident in or just passing through the county.
Fiction published included work by Jeff Nuttall, M. S. Winecoff, Roger Howard, Frances McNeil, David Brett and Trevor Hoyle [5] Poetry contributors included I. P. Taylor, Ian McMillan[6], Paul Roche [7], Anna Adams [8], Michael Horovitz, Pete Morgan, Patrick Bew, Nick Toczek, Geraldine Monk [9] and Heathcote Williams. The reviewers included Jeff Nuttall, Peter Inch and Jay Jeff Jones. Interviews with writers, including several carried out by William Bedford, featured Angela Carter, James Kirkup (in the midst of the Gay News blasphemy trial and appeal), Piers Paul Read and C. H. Sisson. Jones also commissioned original illustrations for many of the written contributions and some of these were by Robert Clark, Rosamund Jones, Jeff Nuttall and Kate Mellor.
The magazine came to a close partially due to a controversy that arose over the publication in issue 6 of a short story by Jeff Nuttall, Dream Piece, which gave offence to a Rotherham Town Councillor. He objected to some of the content being of a sexual nature and asked for the Council to withhold its funding of the YAA as a protest. The furore was quickly taken up by the press, initially with some amusement, but was aggravated when another little magazine also funded by the YAA produced its latest issue. This was Curtains, edited by Paul Buck, and included explicit photographic content. The YAA responded by dismissing its literary advisory panel (not the panel that had agreed support for New Yorkshire Writing or Curtains – but one that refused to withdraw the funding decisions of the previous panel).
New Yorkshire Writing continued for two further issues but one of these included the first publication of Heathcote Williams’ poem, The People Who Run Tesco’s Must be Buddhists. Concerned about another possible controversy, the YAA executive required the excision of the word “Tesco” throughout the poem.
