I thought I'd post here, over the next week, some articles I wrote last year for The Book Magazine, a trade publication which has now gone defunct. I was asked by them to write four short articles which offered advice on contemporary poetry books for those who have a limited or lapsed relationship with recent poetry.
In that respect, of course, they are not aimed at those of you posting here, but I thought they might start some interesting discussions. I'm less interested in your disagreements with my choices (though do so if you wish), which are by nature of the commission partial, in both senses. But I'd be interested to hear you nominating the books in each category which you would have recommended.
The article below was on UK poets who have emerged in the last ten years (first book since 98).
In the fourth part of this series, Roddy Lumsden looks at British poets who have emerged in the past decade.
One of the few perks of being a poet is that you are considered 'young' long after the grey starts ebbing into your temples. A common age for a first collection is the early 30s and its not uncommon for a poet to spend a decade and more thereafter being described as 'new' and 'promising'. Recently, while launching the first in a series of pamphlets I am editing by younger poets, I surveyed a large room packed with poets who were distinctly more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than I am. I think I am ready to concede I am no longer a 'young poet'! So here are some of the key, new names who have published their first books of poetry since I did so exactly a decade ago.
New needn't mean youthful, of course, and a few of the very best poets who have debuted in recent years took to poetry in their forties and fifties. John Stammers has published two highly acclaimed collections (Panoramic Lounge-bar and Stolen Love Behaviour, both from Picador £6.99 / £8.99). Stammers is playful, charming and in thrall to the pop culture of Motown and the movies. He has something of the exuberance associated with American poet Frank O'Hara. A strong influence on much recent poetry, here and across the Atlantic, O'Hara (who died young in the mid-1960s) laced his poetry with instant experience. His chatty, self aware, yet celebratory mode of writing still serves the here and now, especially after a decade or two when the dominant modes were earnest and formal or idiomatic straight-talking.
Another older poet writing thrilling poetry is Annie Freud. The Best Man That Ever Was (Picador £8.99) is her first collection and, in theory, with its narrative poems about men and women, it should be familiar territory. Yet, this is a writer with a magpie soul who has been collecting and concocting the very best yarns for quite some time and is ready at last to share. Each poem grabs you and whirls you on to the floor. A few first lines will give you a flavour of the richness, humour and eroticism to be savoured in this fabulous book, one you can quite safely anoint with that familiar cliché, 'original': 'Googling the archives of the bygone smitten...', 'He remembers how she pulled him down with her laugh...', 'The loose-socked mothers, hip with nerves...'.
Men, women and a different approach also brings to mind the young poet Sally Read whose Bloodaxe collection The Point of Splitting (£7.95) deserves attention. Though in many ways a very English poet: studied and careful, an unusual set of personal circumstances (she has lived in America, worked as a nurse and now lives in Italy with her policeman husband) offers up freshness. This is a writer who understands the body, whether it is one wrapped in bandages or swooning at dawn in a lover's arms.
Bloodaxe have discovered and promoted many of the stars of poetry in recent decades, especially new women writers. The one who interests me most is Jen Hadfield. Though from the north of England, and half-Canadian, Hadfield is an adopted Scot, having studied and lived there for most of the past decade, travelling extensively in its outer reaches. Poetry ought to be about placing words together in ways no one has even considered before, and Hadfield is one of the few who achieve this. This is nature poetry, but not as we know it! Her first book Almanacs (£7.95) is a dizzying road-trip along back-roads and cliff-tops. Her second collection Nigh-No-Place is due next year.
Paul Farley is another poet of places and has been one of the most celebrated and prize-bestown writers of recent times. Lazy critics have dubbed him a bard of nostalgia, or a new Larkin. But Farley is not moping over the past, merely using it as a stage for his dramas. A formalist, Farley has introduced previously distant strands (working class life, popular culture) to traditional verse and has employed seemingly mundane or miniature subjects (phone-books, lightbulbs, treacle) as totems to illuminate wider schemes. He has published three collections with Picador but The Ice Age (£7.99) is probably the strongest.
One way to gauge new poets is by the winners of the annual Forward Prize for best first collection. Two recent winners are to be particularly recommended: Glasgow poet AB Jackson's Fire Stations (Anvil Press £7.95) is a formal and lyrical tour de force which seeks out its subjects in history, psychology and theology, yet wears these lightly, also finding time for poems on weddings, wanderings and late night encounters. Leontia Flynn from Belfast was the 2004 winner with These Days (Cape £8), a 'young poet's book' in the best sense, recording the travails of her student years in mostly short, crisp poems with a high charm factor and a heart on their sleeve.
Finally, I want to recommend a few poets emerging from the more innovative side of the poetic field. Matthew Welton mixes tough-skinned linguistic experiments with charming balladry depicting offbeat characters. His first collection was The Book of Matthew (Carcanet £7.95) and its long, strange title poem consists of one piece, rewritten and rewritten, each time shifting in its emphasis – it ought not to work, but it does. Helen Macdonald's Shaler's Fish (Etruscan £8.50) is expansive and affecting. Her subjects often veer to the scientific – meteorology and ecology – and the ornithological (she is a falconer). The poems appear difficult at first but leave strong impressions and open up beautifully for those who work with them.
Both from Salt, a vibrant and relatively new press which ranges widely but which centres its interest on non-traditional writing, Melanie Challenger's Galatea and Chris McCabe's The Hutton Enquiry (£8.99 / £10.99) are in their different ways ambitious and impressive. Challenger has worked many poems into two long sequences, interspersed with quotes from writers and thinkers. Dense and erotically charged, the book comes recommended by the weighty US critic Harold Bloom. McCabe's chunky debut is a joy to dip into. As you might guess from his title, McCabe is a political poet, compassionate and concerned, and his blend of innovation and invective is refreshing and challenging.
Very engaging introduction I'd say, Roddy!
NB: It's The Hutton Inquiry, not Enquiry
:D