Some more current reading

I've also been enjoying dipping in and out of Ian Duhig's New and Selected Poems, a book I'd been meaning to get hold of for a while. I've long been a fan of his work, and the new poems are every bit as good as anything he's done, I think. Again, I'll write about it at more length when I've had time to digest it properly. 

Jacob Polley wins the TS Eliot Prize

This year's TS Eliot Prize has been won by Cumbrian poet Jacob Polley, for his collection Jackself (Picador). He beat a strong shortlist, including Alice Oswald, Denise Riley, Vahni Capildeo, Ian Duhig and Bernard O'Donoghue.

It's not a book I've read yet. When Polley's first collection came out, to much fanfare, I was a member of the Poetry Book Society and was sent it as one of their quarterly choices, and I'd have to say I was pretty underwhelmed. Not that it was at all bad, just that it didn't seem nearly as exciting as some of the critical notices were promising it would be.

Because of that, I haven't got round to reading any of his subsequent collections. My loss, I suspect, if the poems I've seen from this latest book are anything to go by. Chair of judges Ruth Padel compared it to Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, and that particular masterpiece did spring to mind for me, too. Which can only be a good thing, I should add. I look forward to reading it.

You can read a couple of poems from the book here, and also hear him read them.

There's a really excellent account of the prize readings here, by poet Peter Daniels.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2017

The 25th annual Forward Prize anthology is out on September 15th – it contains all the poems shortlisted for this year's prizes, plus a selection of those highly commended by the judges. Those featured include Vahni Capildeo, John Clegg, Maura Dooley, Ian Duhig, Leontia Flynn, Kathleen Jamie, Luke Kennard, William Letford, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Hannah Lowe, Roy McFarlane, Helen Mort, Alice Oswald, Denise Riley, Carol Rumens, Ian Seed, Julia Webb and Luke Wright.

Magma 65

Issue 65 of the always excellent Magma is out now - you can find further details here.

Reviews include Kathryn Gray on Ian Duhig, Andy Willoughby and Claire Askew; Ian McEwen on Martin Stannard, Matthew Caley and Barbara Cumbers; Rob A Mackenzie on Judy Brown, Lisa Matthews and Adam Crothers; and Pippa Little on Anne-Marie Fyfe, Martin Figura and Andrew Shields.

The High Window

The inaugural issue of The High Window, a new quarterly literary journal, has been published, and you can find it here.

Poets with work in the first issue include Ian Duhig, AF Harrold, Roy Marshall, Abegail Morley, Richard Skinner and Andrew Shields, and there's also a feature on two collage poems by Helen Ivory, an essay by Ian Duhig, translations, and reviews, including one of Martin Malone's new collection, Cur. All things considered, an auspicious start – I'll be keeping an eye on how it develops.

Overlooked UK poets

Over on Twitter, Ian Duhig and a number of other poets drew my attention to this article in Partisan magazine, highlighting the 11 best UK poets you never heard of.

Glad to see RF Langley and John Riley among them. Riley's Selected Poems is a book I go back to again and again – I can't remember exactly where I found it in a secondhand bookshop. Second Fragment (you can read it by following the link that Ian provides) is absolutely exquisite.

I'd be interested to hear further suggestions for poets who might have made the list. Who wants to start?

Antiphon 7

The latest issue of Antiphon is here - there's a truly impressive range of writers featured, including Helen Mort, Bernard O'Donoghue, River Wolton, Alastair Noon, Suzannah Evans, Jonathan Davidson, Pam Thompson, Geraldine Monk and Ian Duhig. Eclectic and exciting, and certainly the best issue yet.

Two poems at And Other Poems...

I've got two poems up at Josephine Corcoran's wonderful And Other Poems blog today - she features a huge array of poets, including the likes of Alison Brackenbury, Bill Herbert, Carrie Etter, David Morley, Ian Duhig and Penelope Shuttle, with new content appearing on a very regular basis.

Both poems - The Mind's Skyline and The Dark Ages - will appear in my forthcoming Nine Arches collection, The Elephant Tests, of which more news in the next few weeks.

Ledbury Festival Competition

I'm delighted to have had a poem - Magnetite - highly commended by judge Ian Duhig in this year's Ledbury Festival Poetry Competition, especially after seeing the three outstanding winning pieces. Have a read of them and see what I mean.

Stand@60

On Saturday, I travelled up to Leeds with Leicester poet Roy Marshall for the Stand60 events being held at the university.

First among these was a masterclass with poet Ian Duhig. We’d all supplied a poem in advance, and Ian then gave feedback on what he felt did and didn’t work about it. Given the number of us there, it equated to about 10 minutes per poem (that’s actually quite a lot, when you’re considering one of your own poems intensely), but he packed an incredible amount in. By the end of three hours I had pages of notes, and not just about poetic technique and the like. If you know Ian’s books you’ll know that one of the great pleasures of them is his ability to move seamlessly from ‘high’ to ‘low’ culture, and to make connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information.

I’d sent a recently-written piece that I’d put aside to go back to later, and I ended up reworking it yesterday along the lines Ian suggested. Essentially, it just feels leaner, harder-working now, and far more like the poem I originally had in mind.

In the afternoon, we went to a couple of the readings. I particularly enjoyed Elizabeth Baines’s short story and David Gaffney’s flash fiction, while in the poetry section, Vahni Capildeo and Alison Brackenbury were the highlights. It’s always good to catch up with Alison, and I owe her a great debt of gratitude for all her help in the past, but this was actually the first time I’d heard her read. It didn’t disappoint – she achieved what, I think, are the two hardest feats to manage at any reading, namely to make each individual poem and the reading itself feel perfectly paced. 

Horizon Review 5

I've been out of circulation for the last 10 days or so, and returned to the usual backlog of emails, plus all sorts of interesting goings-on in the poetry world. I'll post more on some of those, such as the TS Eliot Prize Readings and Michelle McGrane's new book The Suitable Girl, later in the week, but for now, I'll just flag up the latest issue of Horizon Review.

I really do think it's going from strength to strength, so kudos to both former editor Jane Holland and new editor Katy Evans-Bush. There's a wealth of reviews. essays, interviews and stories in there, before you even get to the poetry from the likes of Julia Bird, Alison Brackenbury, David Briggs, Ian Duhig, Roz Goddard, Mark Granier, Helen Ivory, Ira Lightman, Rob A Mackenzie, Andrew Philip and Andrew Shields, to name just a few. I've got a piece in there too -  Zugunruhe - which appears in hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica.

Hare care

This discussion of Charlotte Mew’s The Farmer’s Bride has been going on at the Guardian books blog this week. It’s a fine poem, I think, and well worth a close reading. I don’t share the reservations of some about the attempt to capture the farmer’s speech, and I don’t think it goes too far towards pathos. But I was interested too by some of the other directions the discussion takes – hares and their mythological connections (they're my favourite British mammal*, although it was only fairly recently I read that the Brown Hare is non-native - it was the Mountain Hare the Celts were thinking of); the wonderful folk song The Bonny Black Hare (I've written about Fairport Convention's version before); and Ian Duhig's equally fine poem The Lammas Hireling - it's all worth reading.

* I don't see too many, although the wide, rolling fields around Blatherwycke in Northants always seem to turn up a few when I'm out Red Kite watching. But earlier this year, as I was driving along the narrow lane from Eyebrook Reservoir towards Stockerston, a young Hare was sitting in the road. It showed no inclination to move, and I wondered if it was injured. But it finally slipped through the fence, and then waited as I pulled alongside, and was able to watch it from a few feet away. Eventually, it proved its rude health to my satisfaction by exploding into a lightning fast dash across the field to cover.