Exile - Poetry Magazine

The success of Outlet and all that had been developed around it since the mid 80's still wasn't enough to guarantee

John Herbert Marr

 publication to many of the writers that were now emerging in the area. Outlet's funding only enabled us to publish a limited amount of material and as funding became more difficult to achieve the magazine ceased to appear bi-monthly even as it originally did, although the work went on in between with developing other resources, especially the Write Around festival.

Exile issue 1 (Jan 1989)

In January 1989, two local poets, both published in Outlet but who felt there was a need for more outlets in the area had the get up and go to produce the first of a new crop of magazines for the area. Ann Elliot-Marr and John Herbert Marr launched the first issue of the A5 sized magazine Exile from their base in Billingham (later Saltburn). Although it started as a kind of rival, Ann and John became friends with Outlet and became important contributors to the Write Around festival as well as contributing to the Writing Scene in many other ways. Mark Beevers, who was a recent addition to the Outlet team, became involved with the Exile editors in various ways, and was helped by Ann Elliot-Marr to launch ET magazine for the unemployed in Middlesbrough.

Exile Magazine

Like Poetic Licence before it, Exile started off publishing only local poets but very soon took contributions from all over

Exile Magazine

 but still including the Tees Valley area. By the mid 90's the Exile editors had moved out of the area and the magazine continued to be published from their new base.