Ebook: Other British and Irish poetry since 1970

When most Americans think of contemporary British poetry, they think of such mainstream poets as Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, and Geoffrey Hill. Yet there is a vibrant, diverse alternative poetry movement in the UK, inspired in large measure by the work of such significant mentors as Basil Bunting and J. H. Prynne. There is growing interest in this work in the United States - as alternative American poetries express increasingly transnational concerns - and yet almost none of it is available here.

OTHER is a highly focused anthology bringing together several important strands of English-language poetry that are not otherwise so readily accessible. It includes work by 55 poets, among them Cris Cheek, Brian Coffey, Fred d'Aguiar, Allen Fisher, Ulli Freer, Randolph Healy, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Wendy Mulford, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley, Catherine Walsh; a critical introduction addressing such topics as the interaction of British and American poetic traditions; and brief biographical and bibliographical notes on each poet.

### From Publishers Weekly

Though England has seen a spate of recent anthologies of alternative U.K. poetry, this collection marks the first published in the States in more than two decades. Caddel, a noted poet, and Quartermain, a prominent critic of postmodern poetry, collect a diverse and exciting range of work that is evenly balanced between such trends as Caribbean dub poetry; the mellifluous, baroque lyric as it has been developed in Cambridge; London-based performance and concrete poetry; and "outsider" figures such as Bill Griffiths (an independent Anglo-Saxon scholar) and Tom Raworth, whose Reverdy-inspired early lyrics first found appreciation in the States. The compelling introduction portrays a late-millennium English milieu that is marked by overlapping ethnicities and class perspectives, but that traces an experimental tradition "back to Claire, Blake, Smart, and the two Vaughans, Henry and Thomas." The selections from the 55 poets are brief yet excellent. Barry McSweeney, a self-styled Rimbaudian, is represented by a number of terse, direct poems that flaunt provocative language. Denise Riley's subtle, tradition-conscious ear allows lines that are unexpectedly comforting, while Raworth's "That More Simple Natural Time Tone Distortion," a sonic joy-ride of one- to three-word lines that bristle with pixilated narrative, is a contrast to his traditional short lyric "Out of a Sudden." Tom Leonard's Glasgow Scots, not unlike John Agard's Guyanese-inflected idiom, brings to eye and ear a sweet, confident music that is unlike anything in this country. Veronica Forrest-Thomson, a poet and critic who died at 28; Chris Cheek; Maggie O'Sullivan and concrete poet Bob Cobbing are all well represented, as are important figures who guided the influx of New American poetry to the islands: Eric Mottram, Roy Fisher and Andrew Crozier. This is an important sourcebook to a literature that is probably more marked by the multiculturalist energy and divergences from the main modernist line than that of the United States.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

### From Library Journal

The United States is not the only English-speaking nation in which oppositional poetries thrive despite the willful inattention of the literary mainstream. This work of 55 poets?the first significant anthology of experimental verse from the U.K. available here in 25 years?demonstrates how Objectivist, Projectivist, Beat, and Caribbean influences have infiltrated the tradition-bound isles of Hughes and Heaney, as standard punctuation and stanzaic forms give way to impressionistic word-streams and open-field constructions. The approach may be visual (Bob Cobbing), political (Barry MacSweeney, Amyrl Johnson), or conceptual (Maggie O'Sullivan, Catherine Walsh), but to readers of Language and other postmodern schools much of it may actually seem a bit restrained, as if its practitioners had achieved the style but not the anarchic spirit of their American progenitors. Still, this anthology is a valuable document of poetic trends that are likely to continue overseas through the next decade.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.