Welcome to UK Poetry - May 2008
Welcome to the May edition of Poetry International Web UK. This issue we invite Fiona Sampson, Editor of Poetry Review, to select poets for our pages. Fiona has provided us with a small and brilliant taster of the high-quality work that consistently features in one of the UK’s longest running poetry publications.
Poetry Review was founded in 1912, emerging from the Poetry Society’s in-house publication, the Poetical Gazette. Since then it has been editorially independent from the Poetry Society, with each editor, or pair of editors, bringing a distinct approach to the magazine.
Fiona Sampson has edited Poetry Review since 2005, in which time she has introduced readers to a particular blend of international poetries; that is to say, she has not only selected poets from outside of the British poetry scene to showcase to her readers, but also British poets who have a sense of cultural range, in their writing and perspectives, beyond the limited geography of these small isles.
This international outlook is visible in the magazine’s contents and also in a series of accompanying pamphlets, including a Lithuanian poetry supplement in Spring 2008 (volume 98:1) and a Dutch supplement in Autumn 2007 (volumn 97:3), initiated under her editorship. Fiona will be steering the magazine through the Poetry Society’s Centenary in 2009 as the Poetry Society expands its global presence alongside its UK activities. She will be editing A Century of Poetry Review, a special celebratory anthology to be published in autumn 2009 by Carcanet Press.
Fiona herself has an illustrious career as a poet. She has published fifteen books to date and received many accolades for her poetry, including the Newdigate Prize. Her most recent collection, Common Prayer (Carcanet, Manchester 2007), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2007, and she was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best Single Poem in 2006.
The three poets showcased this May are David Harsent, Pauline Stainer and Peter Porter. Together they have collected a fair few mantelpieces of prizes and plaudits, nominations and Poetry Book Society recommendations, establishing themselves over the years as household names in British poetry and abroad. Rather than say any more, I’ll direct you to the marvellous introductions provided by Fiona. Enjoy!
Is it a paradox that, in choosing three poets to represent what’s best about British poetry today, I’ve picked three resolute independents – whose work, while celebrated, has consistently resisted the merely fashionable? I don’t think so. The most important writing occurs where a body of work demonstrates extraordinary talent – of course – but also follows its own internal necessity of idea and form. In Britain, as everywhere, there are plenty of literary ‘clones’; but the best poets are sui generis. Their work defines contemporary writing by the way it raises stakes and opens up possibility, rather than simply because it’s of its time and place.
One of the excitements of editing Poetry Review is working with this writing as it emerges. An associated privilege is a sense of when poets are preparing a new book which will emerge onto, and once again alter, the national scene. David Harsent, Peter Porter and Pauline Stainer (in purely alphabetical order) are three such poets – here giving us a wonderful preview of their new collections.
Links
The Poetry Society
Poetry Review
Fiona Sampson on how poetry should be taught
From the Guardian Unlimited blogs, Fiona’s response to Ofsted’s October 2007 report into how poetry is taught in British schools.
Fiona Sampson at Contemporary Writers
