The Scores

For those who have never visited, The Scores is the name of a street in the town of St Andrews, one that winds carefully, almost precariously, along the cliff edge above the chilly waters of the North Sea. Overlooking this street, the English Department at the University of St Andrews finds its home. And it is here that our online magazine, The Scores, has come to life. This street, a site of motion in the liminal space between sea, sky, and solid ground, seems the perfect perch for a magazine of poetry, an art whose very nature is liminal, and whose lines drop sharply into the cold sea of the page.

The Scores is not a journal of student work, but rather a journal edited, compiled, and managed by the MFA Creative Writing students at the University of St Andrews, working under an advisory team of esteemed professors and instructors both in and beyond the programme. We seek to publish a very wide range of poetry (as can be seen in our current issue) in English and the languages of Scotland, along with poems translated into English and reviews of recent work in our bi-annual issues. We like work that thrills, work that moves, work that plays along the cliff edge. (For more information on our submission policies, please visit the submissions page.)

Each issue also contains a ‘Letter to a Young Poet’, written by a well-established voice in the world of contemporary poetry, offering inside advice and insights to new generations of writers. In addition, we publish interviews and videos with some of the many writers who visit the university to teach or recite their work. As a university journal, we feel it is part of our mission to offer more than just work worthy of emulating and admiring, but resources and insights to help writers at all stages in their careers, in the hope that we might make the sometimes lonely work of writing somewhat less so. We hope that, whether writer, reader, or anything in between, you find something worth exploring in our issues and work. Perhaps you will even find some company among these pages.