Synopses & Reviews
The only definitive anthology of contemporary British poetry available in the United States,
New British Poetry presents the exciting work of thirty-five poets from England, Scotland, and Wales. In compiling this landmark anthology, T. S. Eliot Prize-winning Scottish poet Don Paterson and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic followed two rules: the poets chosen should be born after 1945 and should have at least two books published in Britain. The resulting anthology collects some of the very best work of a new generation of poets who have come of age since Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes.
From established poets such as Andrew Motion and James Fenton, to mid-career poets such as Glyn Maxwell and Kathleen Jamie, to recent T. S. Eliot Prize-winner Alice Oswald, the work is fiercely intelligent, often irreverent, and engaged with traditional forms and an exhilarating range of styles.
A generous sampling of each poet's work is included. As Paterson writes in his introduction, "this group of poets represents some of the most intelligent and imaginative writers
working in the English language today." New British Poetry is destined to become a seminal anthology, introducing many important new voices to American readers.
About the Author
Don Paterson is the poetry editor at Picador U.K. and author of
The White Lie: New and Selected Poetry. Charles Simic won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for his poetry
collection The World Doesn't End. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.
Table of Contents
Preface by Charles Simic Introduction by Don Paterson
Gillian Allnutt
Scheherazade
The Silk Light of Advent
Held To
Notes on living inside the lightbulb
The Road Home
Simon Armitage
Very Simply Topping Up the Brake Fluid
Poem
The Tyre
The Dead Sea Poems
John Ash
The Ungrateful Citizens
The Sky My Husband
Memories of Italy
Sujata Bhatt
(Shérdi)
Muliebrity
What Is Worth Knowing?
Fischerhude, 2001
John Burnside
Parousia
The Old Gods
Robert Crawford
The Saltcoats Structuralists
The Handshakes
The Result
Fiat Lux
Alba Einstein
Fred D'Aguiar
Airy Hall Nightmare
The Cow Perseverance
Sound Bite
Home
Peter Didsbury
The Shorter Life
That Old-Time Religion
Part of the Bridge
0Chandlery
Michael Donaghy
Machines
Shibboleth
The Bacchae
Caliban's Books
A Repertoire
Carol Ann Duffy
Prayer
Warming Her Pearls
Little Red-Cap
Circe
Ian Duhig
Fundamentals
Chocolate Soldier
The Lammas Hireling
Paul Farley
Treacle
The Lamp
Diary Moon
An Interior
Peter and the Dyke
James Fenton
Wind
A Staffordshire Murderer
In a Notebook
Mark Ford
Looping the Loop
The Long Man
Early to Bed, Early to Rise
John Glenday
Concerning the Atoms of the Soul
A Day at the Seaside
The Garden
The Empire of Lights
Hydrodamalis Gigas
Lavinia Greenlaw
Reading Akhmatova in Midwinter
Three
The Spirit of the Staircase
Zombies
Electricity
W. N. Herbert
Slow Animals Crossing
Cabaret McGonagall
Smirr
The King and Queen of Dumfriesshire
Selima Hill
I Will Be Arriving Next Thursday in My Wedding-Dress
I Know I Ought to Love You
My Sister's Jeans
A Small Hotel
Please Can I Have a Man
Michael Hofmann
Ancient Evenings
The Machine That Cried
The Late Richard Dadd, 1817-1886
Lament for Crassus
Kathleen Jamie
The Way We Live
The Bogey-Wife
Skeins o Geese
Pipistrelles
The Hill-track
Alan Jenkins
Visiting
Portrait of a Lady
Barcelona
Inheritance
Jackie Kay
Even the Trees
In my country
Finger
The Shoes of Dead Comrades
[from] Other Lovers
Gwyneth Lewis
Pentecost
'One day, feeling hungry'
Woods
The Flaggy Shore
[from] Welsh Espionage: ix Advice on Adultery
Roddy Lumsden
Always
An Older Woman
Piquant
The Man I Could Have Been
Glyn Maxwell
My Turn
The Poem Recalls the Poet
Helene and Heloise
Jamie McKendrick
Ancient History
Sky Nails
Six Characters in Search of Something
The One-Star
Andrew Motion
The Lines
A Wall
A Glass of Wine
The Letter
Mythology
Sean O'Brien
Cousin Coat
After Laforgue
The Amateur God
Alice Oswald
April
Bike Ride on a Roman Road
Sea Sonnet
Wedding
Prayer
Ruth Padel
Tinderbox
Skin
Angel
The Starling
On the Line
Don Paterson
The White Lie
St Brides: Sea-Mail
Imperial
Peter Reading
[from] Stet
Salopian
Christopher Reid
A Whole School of Bourgeois Primitives
What the Uneducated Old Woman Told Me
In the Echoey Tunnel
Mermaids Explained
Fetish
Robin Robertson
Fall
Fugue for Phantoms
Artichoke
Wedding the Locksmith's Daughter
The Immoralist
Anne Rouse
Testament
Faith Healers
Memo to Auden
The Anaesthetist
Jo Shapcott
Muse
My Life Asleep
Motherland
The Mad Cow in Love
Phrase Book
Index of Authors and Titles
Index of First Lines