Peter Riley on WS Graham

Peter Riley is as excellent as ever in The Fortnightly Review, talking about WS Graham, and specifically the New Selected Poems edited by Matthew Francis, the Selected Poems edited by Michael Hofmann, and The Caught Habits Of Language, a recent celebration of Graham's work which I reviewed for Magma and enjoyed a lot.

I found myself agreeing with most of what Riley says, especially about Hofmann's almost total rejection of Graham's earlier work, and indeed of the poetry of the 1940s generally, which feels lazy and unsubstantiated.

Blackbox Manifold 17

The winter issue (No.17) of Blackbox Manifold is out now, with work by Linda Anderson, Tom Betteridge, Adam Burbage, Stephen Burt, James Byrne, Sophie Collins, Joey Connolly, Adam Flint, Jane Goldman, Thomas Kelly, Chris Kerr, Eric Langley, Dorothy Lehane, Tan Lin, Jaki McCarrick, Gail McConnell, Joseph Minden, Ian Patterson, Robert Sheppard, Ronnie Sirmans, Oliver Southall, Matthew Sweeney, Charles Tarlton, Ken Taylor, Jonty Tiplady and Samuel Tongue.

John Tamplin interviews Keston Sutherland, Peter Larkin reviews Peter Riley, Adam Piette reviews Eliot, Denise Riley and Charlotte Newman, and there are essays on JH Prynne.

Forward Prize nominations

The shortlists for this year's Forward Prizes have been released - particularly nice to see Peter Riley and Kim Moore in there, but they're interesting lists all round. I'll have to try to get hold of a few of the others to read over the summer, but in the meantime, I'd be interested to hear opinions on any of the nominated books and poems.

Poetry and prizes

There's a good article here, in the Fortnightly Review, about prizes in poetry. I haven't really got time at the moment to get any coherent thoughts about it down, but I think I agree with the central thrust of Peter Riley's argument. It's not that I object to some poets or books being singled out as better than others - clearly they are - it's what Riley calls the "culture of the superlative" that starts to put my back up. I'm not entirely sure John Burnside is the best example to choose, but I'll have to give it some though, and return to it when I've got a few minutes.