Little Magazines: Casablanca and Outposts

CASABLANCA is "a political magazine that's true, clean and fearless", and its winter issue is a folder supposedly containing "ten desirable things". Where, where? These turn out to be the assorted colour stickers and bumf that cascaded out of the envelope.

The "miniature colour poster" is a small orange image of a woman leaping in the air. The "giant size" postcard is an indifferent photomontage, the "fluorescent souvenir from a '60s legend" a small fuzzy daisy motif. What are you supposed to do with it? Christopher Logue's Homeric manuscript is a badly photocopied sheet of notes ("Trojans marching out/ noisy/ birds/ pigmies/ cranes").

The postcards are good, especially Walid Mustafa Siti's splashy acrylic and Chris Furby's surreal montage "Fishtank". And the pocket calendar with almanac is fun. In January it predicts "potato galas all over Hertfordshire... fustian is in, and Milk of Magnesia is out..."

How do they manage to keep going? Veteran literary mag OUTPOSTS is an astonishing 50 years old, and the University of Salzburg has printed a tribute, Salute to Outposts (£9.95). Editor Roland John spells out the stark economics: he gets about 50,000 unsolicited poems a year, from an estimated 13,000 hopefuls. "If 10% of them subscribed or even bought a single copy there would be no financial crisis," John notes glumly.

Elsewhere in this Festschrift, Muriel Spark is remembered as a spiky poetry editor. James Brockway recalls a treasured rejection slip: "I don't know why it is you don't write poetry... Have you read I A Richard's Principles of Literary Criticism? Yours si n cerely, Muriel Spark."

Roland John claims that everything in Outposts represents the best of its kind, whether sonnet, vers libre, haiku. Amazing then that this special issue prints poems with lines like "Hush, hush says the wind" and Hardiman Scott's prose chopped up into lines, not, alas, as stimulating as cocaine... 8 Casablanca, 31 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R 0AT (071 608 3784) £12 for four issues.

8 Outposts, 22 Whitewell Road, Frome, Somerset, BA11 4EL £12 for four issues.