Saboteur Awards 2012: The Winners

The voting closed last night at midnight with 191 of you letting us know which of the nominated magazines were your favourite. Reading your comments has been one of the most rewarding parts of the process and demonstrates how passionate you feel about magazines, which is a very wonderful thing indeed.

The winner of the Saboteur Awards 2012, with nearly half of the votes cast overall, is….Armchair/Shotgun!

Here are some of the comments you made about this fine publication when we asked you why your vote should win:

‘Armchair/Shotgun is a saboteur in the best and worst ways–it sabotages complacency, which is a very dangerous thing in a mass marketed, preprocessed, single-serving-container society. A/S is not the kind of publication you’ll find at the dentist’s office, alongside US Weekly and The New Yorker. Its pages sabotage insensate reading and rote thinking. A/S is the single lit magazine out there that has the power, issue after issue, to physically rearrange the contents of my brain.’

‘Evan Simko-Bednarski.’

‘Obscure, powerful and entertaining.’

‘Because they don’t just stay on the page, they come out to the people and give great animated events.’

‘Armchair/Shotgun is an interesting mix of content. Its philosophy that “story” is the only element that matters, is refreshing and inclusive.’

‘Armchair/Shotgun is as beautiful as it is brilliant. Deeply serious, irreverent, socially aware, sassy, at once dressy and casual. Sexy. Literate and fun, in a world where “literate” and “fun” are, too often, mutually exclusive categories. The kind of magazine I’d not only like to read while drinking, but that I’d also like to have a drink with.’

High praise indeed and a worthy winner! We will feature Armchair/Shotgun soon on these very pages and send them a winner’s logo.

In second place, we have a tie! Ilk and New Linear Perspectives!

Here is what you had to say about Ilk:

‘because they rip apart what people think poems ‘should’ be about’

‘For a new journal, it is focused on its aesthetic while still be exciting, slick in design, and professional in its submission and publicity policies. Doing it right!’

‘In the immortal words of David Berman: “I know these recurring news articles are clues, / flaws in the design, though I haven’t figured out / how to string them together yet. / But I’m noticing that the same people / are dying over and over again.”‘

‘A great, fresh and varied collection of new writing edited with a sense of adventure.’

‘Ilk is a new magazine with a stellar mix of new and established poets. They have consistently incredible work and yet are still new and excited about what they are doing.’

‘I love the way the stories are presented on the site and I like the community-spirit that the editors have created in such a short time. Also, great editing.’

and on New Linear Perspectives:

‘New Linear Perspectives offers a unique blend of art, cultural review and poetry from a corner of the world (but not limited to it) that is often underrepresented. Plus, it’s always fun to read and really interesting!’

‘Always interesting and diverse, never dull.’

‘Cutting edge and inspirational’

‘Quality, variety, originality – and AFG, the captain of their ship is vim and verve full, a delight to deal with in person and in print. He doesn’t wait for the verse always to come to him but seeks out content, a rare trait for which there’s amble room in this sector. Michael Neu! Reekie! Limited’

‘Innovative, highbrow, current.’

‘Was there at the birth of NLP and have watched it grow, broaden and deepen – an impressive achievement.’

In third place we have… Anon!

Here are some of the comments:

‘It is a fantastic poetry magazine. I probably owe my current interest in poetry to it and have become a faithful reader. It offers a critical and loving approach to its subject, is has particularly good taste and it has so far never bored me! I wish Anon plenty of luck!’

‘it introduced me to poetry.’

‘An ambitious magazine with a unique code of ethics it also features thoughtful and enlightening essays which bring new ideas to the fore. Yes!’

‘Who can’t be impressed with their tagline: We don’t care who you AREN’T ? It’s fresh, it’s honest, and everyone wins in this scenario. Darned good writing too.’

Thank you everyone for voting!