New British Poetry (2004)
Encyclopedia
New British Poetry is a 2004
poetry anthology edited by Scots poet Don Paterson
and American poet Charles Simic
.
In his preface, Simic wrote: "To make it as current as possible, Don Paterson and I decided to include only poets born after 1945 who have had at least two books published. Aside from that constraint, our plan was simply to read a lot of poetry and pick out poems we like."
In a review of the book, Zachariah Wells
writes that the editors "favour taste over tact, to exclude work from that school of opaque hermeticism known variously as 'experimental,' 'postmodern' or 'avant-garde' poetry. This is a conscious decision, made explicit by Paterson [...]"
Paterson, in his "passionately opinionated" introduction, has a defense of mainstream poetry:
Reviews
2004 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* April 1 — Foetry.com Web site is launched for the announced purpose of "Exposing fraudulent contests. Tracking the sycophants...
poetry anthology edited by Scots poet Don Paterson
Don Paterson
Don Paterson, OBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.-Background:Paterson was born in Dundee. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem A Private Bottling won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the...
and American poet Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
.
In his preface, Simic wrote: "To make it as current as possible, Don Paterson and I decided to include only poets born after 1945 who have had at least two books published. Aside from that constraint, our plan was simply to read a lot of poetry and pick out poems we like."
In a review of the book, Zachariah Wells
Zachariah Wells
Zachariah Wells is a Canadian poet, critic, essayist and editor.Born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, he grew up in the rural community of Hazel Grove. Wells attended high school in Ottawa, Ontario and university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As an undergraduate, he spent summers working in...
writes that the editors "favour taste over tact, to exclude work from that school of opaque hermeticism known variously as 'experimental,' 'postmodern' or 'avant-garde' poetry. This is a conscious decision, made explicit by Paterson [...]"
Paterson, in his "passionately opinionated" introduction, has a defense of mainstream poetry:
- The work of the Postmoderns delegates the production of meaning to the reader, their poetry being largely derelict in its responsibility to aid it. The reader is alone. For those of us quickly bored by our own company, the result is work that can be objectively described as extremely boring.
Poets included
The volume includes work from 36 poets from England, Scotland, and Wales (not Northern Ireland):- Gillian AllnuttGillian AllnuttGillian Allnutt is an English poet who now lives in Esh Winning, County Durham. Her books Nantucket and the Angel and Lintel were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2001/02 and 2002/03 she was a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, partly at Newcastle University...
- Simon ArmitageSimon ArmitageSimon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...
- John AshJohn Ash (writer)John Ash is an expatriate British poet and writer.His lifelong interest in Byzantium is a major theme which runs through his poetry, fiction and travel writing, along with family friends and the three major cities he has lived in...
- Sujata BhattSujata BhattSujata Bhatt is an Indian poet, a native speaker of Gujarati.-Life and career:Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, and brought up in Pune until 1968, when she emigrated to the United States with her family. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa, and for a time was writer-in-residence at the...
- John BurnsideJohn BurnsideJohn Burnside is a Scottish writer, born in Dunfermline.-Background:Burnside studied English and European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996...
- Robert CrawfordRobert Crawford (Scottish poet)Robert Crawford FRSE FRA is a Scottish poet, scholar and critic. He is currently Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.-Early life:...
- Fred D'AguiarFred D'AguiarFred D'Aguiar is an author of poetry, novels, and drama.D'Aguiar was born in London. His parents were Guyanese. He spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Guyana. His work has received much, and growing, acclaim. His Bill of Rights, about the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, was a...
- Peter DidsburyPeter didsburyPeter Didsbury is an English poet who was born in Fleetwood, Lancashire but lived most of his life in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire...
- Michael DonaghyMichael DonaghyMichael Donaghy was an award-winning New York poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985.-Life and career:...
- Carol Ann DuffyCarol Ann DuffyCarol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...
- Ian DuhigIan Duhig-Life:He was the eighth of eleven children born to Irish parents. He graduated from Leeds University.He worked for 15 years with homeless people.He is a writer and teacher of creating writing at various institutions, including the Arvon Foundation....
- Paul FarleyPaul FarleyPaul Farley is an award-winning English poet. He studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, and has lived in London, Brighton and Cumbria...
- James FentonJames FentonJames Martin Fenton is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.-Life and career:...
- Mark Ford
- John GlendayJohn Glenday-Life:John graduated as a psychiatric nurse and worked in Dundee for many years. In 1990-91, he was appointed the Scottish/Canadian Exchange Fellow at the University of Alberta. He has taught at the Banff Centre. He lives in Drumnadrochit, Scotland, with his wife Erika...
- Lavinia GreenlawLavinia Greenlaw-Biography:Greenlaw was born in London into a family of doctors and scientists, but spent much of her childhood in a small village in Essex. She began her working life in publishing and arts administration before embarking upon a career as a freelance artist, critic and radio broadcaster. She lives...
- W. N. HerbertW. N. HerbertW. N. Herbert, also known as Bill Herbert is a poet from Dundee, Scotland. He writes in both English and Scots. He and Richard Price founded the poetry magazine Gairfish. Educated at Brasenose College he currently teaches at Newcastle University...
- Selima HillSelima Hill-Life:She read at Cambridge University. She was a Fellow at University of Exeter.She lives in Lyme Regis.-Awards:* 1986 Cholmondeley Award* Arvon Poetry Prize* Whitbread Poetry Award* University of East Anglia Writing Fellowship...
- Michael HofmannMichael HofmannMichael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...
- Kathleen JamieKathleen JamieKathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....
- Alan JenkinsAlan Jenkins (poet)-Life:He was brought up on the outskirts of London in Richmond, and educated at the University of Sussex, and has worked for the Times Literary Supplement since 1981, first as poetry and fiction editor, and then as deputy editor. He was also a poetry critic for The Observer, and the Sunday...
- Jackie KayJackie KayJackie Kay MBE is a Scottish poet and novelist.-Biography:Jackie Kay was born in Glasgow in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, Jonathan C. Okafor who later became a prominent tropical plant taxonomist...
- Gwyneth LewisGwyneth LewisGwyneth Lewis is a Welsh poet, and was the first National Poet for Wales.-Biography:Born into a Welsh speaking family, Lewis's father started teaching her English when her mother went into hospital to give birth to her sister....
- Roddy LumsdenRoddy LumsdenRoddy Lumsden is a Scottish poet, who was born in St Andrews. He has published five collections of poetry, a number of chapbooks and a collection of trivia, as well as editing a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade, among other...
- Glyn MaxwellGlyn MaxwellGlyn Maxwell is a British poet.-Early life:Though his parents are Welsh, Maxwell was born and raised in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. He studied English at Worcester College, Oxford. He began an MLitt there, but in 1987 moved to America to study poetry and drama with Derek Walcott at...
- Jamie McKendrickJamie McKendrick-Poetry:McKendrick has published five collections of poetry.He is also the editor of The Faber Book of 20th-Century Italian Poems .-Awards:...
- Andrew MotionAndrew MotionSir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...
- Sean O'BrienSean O'Brien (writer)Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic, playwright. Prizes he has garnered include the Eric Gregory Award , the Somerset Maugham Award , the Cholmondeley Award , the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize...
- Alice OswaldAlice Oswald-Career:Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald , and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England....
- Ruth PadelRuth PadelRuth Sophia Padel is a British poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London. She also writes non-fiction and more recently fiction, broadcasts on wildlife, poetry and literature for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and is Writer in Residence at The Environment Institute,...
- Don PatersonDon PatersonDon Paterson, OBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.-Background:Paterson was born in Dundee. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem A Private Bottling won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the...
- Peter ReadingPeter ReadingPeter Reading was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his choice of ugly subject matter, and use of classical metres. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry describes his verse as "strongly anti-romantic, disenchanted and usually satirical"...
- Christopher ReidChristopher ReidChristopher Reid is a Hong Kong-born British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer. He has been nominated twice for the Whitbread Awards in 1996 and in 1997. A contemporary of Martin Amis, he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He is one of the exponents of Martian poetry which employs...
- Robin RobertsonRobin RobertsonRobin Robertson is a Scottish poet.-Biography:Robertson was brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland, but has spent most of his professional life in London...
- Anne RouseAnne RouseAnne Barrett Rouse is an American-British poet. Along with Michael Donaghy and Eva Salzman, she has been cited as a noted American-British contributor to contemporary British poetry.-Biography:...
- Jo ShapcottJo ShapcottJo Shapcott FRSL, is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.-Career:...
External links
- http://www.graywolfpress.org/component/page,shop.flypage/product_id,92/category_id,0485aa93fa0558fb1f755721e776984d/option,com_phpshop/ Graywolf Press Web page on the book
Reviews
- http://www.danforthreview.com/reviews/poetry/2anthologies.htm Review of the book by Zach Wells at The Danforth Review (Canadian)