The Young British Poets! by Todd Swift

From a distance, Britain (the UK), can appear a weird place – especially these days. It’s just had a week of travel chaos with its skies completely shut down due to an Icelandic volcano. It is in the midst of a major election (to be decided in 12 days) that has been wildly galvanised by its first ever leaders debate on television (!). And one of its most popular TV shows is (still) Doctor Who, about an undying eccentric “time lord”. Current hit records include Kate Nash’s “My Best Friend Is You” where a chirpy British lass writes about sex and dating in frank terms, and Paul Weller (of The Jam) wanting to “Wake Up The Nation”.

Britain has been slow to come out of the recession, and, with its youth knife crime, wildly drunken villages and inner cities, class divides (whole swathes of the population still can’t easily access college education), and obsession with celebrity (especially overpaid footballers and size-zero models and starlets) is sometimes called Broken Britain. For others, like Harry Potter star, Daniel Radcliffe, richer than Prince Harry, Britain seems to be working just fine. It’s been observed that America and England are divided by a common language, and, as Hugh Kenner was one of the first critics to point out, the British love-affair with international modernism in art and poetry was of limited duration, to say the least.

Charles Bernstein and John Ashbery are coterie poets here, read by few and feared by most who do read them – let alone Hart Crane or William Carlos Williams. Few American (or Canadian) poets are published in the UK. There is a sense of isolation, even xenophobia, in some poetry quarters – and why not? The popular Tory party wants to pull out of membership in Europe. This is a kingdom united, more often than not, in the idea of its superior difference.

The battle lines became drawn, again, in the 1990s, when a “New Generation” of popular mainstream poets emerged, such as Don Paterson and Carol Ann Duffy. These are now two of the most successful poets over here, in terms of prizes and cultural impact. Paterson has just won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Duffy is the Poet Laureate. Also popular are Roger McGough, and Wendy Cope. Rounding off the top ten poets, in terms of name recognition, might be Andrew Motion, Craig Raine, James Fenton, and of course, the Irish poets Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon. Also beloved, and sadly, recently dead, is Peter Porter, the Audenesque satirist of metropolitan values. Other well-established, if a little younger, poets would include Patience Agbabi, Sophie Hannah, Daljit Nagra, Alice Oswald, Paul Farley, Fiona Sampson and Robin Robertson.

Meanwhile, an alternative, small press and avant-garde poetry beavers away in the margins, excluded normally from reviews in the national papers, or notice at the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society awards. The main poets of this “experimental” mode might be said to include the “Cambridge poets” JH Prynne and Denise Riley. They are sufficiently respected to have been mentioned in Stephen Fry’s popularist (and traditionalist) how-to book, The Ode Less Travelled. Their work is, at least in part, underwritten by an openness to American poets from the Donald M. Allen period, especially The Beats, Olson, Dorn, and The New York School. The dividing line between these styles or kinds of poetry is language. Terms like “poetries” and “poetics” are not as common in poetry debates in the UK, which prides itself on a mainly bluff, practical, and empiricist anti-theoretical stance. Most poets here are commonsense, and avoid worked-out theories as to why they write the way they do. Their hymn book is compiled by Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes, by way of Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, and William Wordsworth. The watchwords are craft, form, and mastery. One is meant, a la Eliot (whose later reactionary period is privileged over his earlier avant-garde years), to control and suppress, emotion, as much as anything.

The tension arises because the UK has a very successful track record in publishing, marketing and selling well-made formally charming, often clever, lyric poems (almost a million books of poetry sold each year); public performances are reaching ever-larger audiences on stage and online – and all this “mainstream” poetry tends to ignore or mock more “lyrically disrupted” texts. However, in the last decade, a younger generation of British poets (and publications, like the leading journals Poetry Review and Poetry London) has emerged, one which, to an extent, has lost interest in the simplicity of these old style battles between the modern and anti-modern. In part, this is because creative writing MAs, MFAs and PhDs have become common here in the last five or six years, building on the UEA model.

In part, the Internet and social networking has simply made more and different approaches more available; post-Bush, the younger poets are less anti-American. And even during Bush, satellite TV made North American culture more popular than ever. The younger poets read and enjoy American writers and poets; but they still retain a native expression – which tends to understatement, irony, deflation, and, especially, wit. So, what the under-forty poets have going for them is, to brutally approximate, an ability to write an elliptical or “New York School” poem, but by way of Larkin or Muldoon, or Cope. They enjoy the eclectic virtuosity of the post-modern, and have begun to question capitalism (and express concern for the environment), but also retain the right to use the lyric I, rhyme, iambic pentameter, and popular forms (the sonnet and villanelle, especially). In America, this might be called “hybrid” poetry; I’ve called it “fusion” elsewhere.

A consensus as to who the best of these Young British Poets might be has perhaps begun to emerge in the last two years, as the first decade of the new century came to a close, with key Bloodaxe anthologies such Voice Recognition, Identity Parade, and my own section in The Manhattan Review, and the recent Oxfam DVD of 35 emerging poets, Asking A Shadow To Dance. Also very important has been the impact of small press tall-lighthouse, as an instigator of pamphlets and collections for dozens of the youngest poets since 2000; and Faber’s more recent support of young poets with its own pamphlet series. Over the next few posts I’ll intro a few of them in more depth. For now, a roll-call of the best of them might be a useful jumping off point for anyone who feels like Googling for a few hours (most have poems online, or their own blogs).

In no particular order, here are 25 emerging or recently-established British poets (I leave out the Irish this time around) you should expect to hear more about in the next few years, and who are worth reading now: Keston Sutherland, Emily Berry, Joe Dunthorne, Annie Katchinska, Sandeep Parmar, James Byrne, Nathan Hamilton, Jack Underwood, Heather Phillipson, Sam Riviere, Kate Potts, Melanie Challenger, Jen Hadfield, Luke Kennard, Chris McCabe, Clare Pollard, Jacob Polley, George Ttoouli, Liz Berry, Zoe Brigley, Helen Mort, Ben Wilkinson, Tom Chivers, Alex McRae, and Kathryn Simmonds. Needless to say, I haven’t been able to cram in every brilliant poet (friend or foe) into the list above, but it’s one that, drawn from a number of anthologies and other sources, does represent the main generational tendencies towards both experiment and craft – a very British compromise, if you will.

There are other very fine younger poets currently writing in the UK, often of hybrid identity (expatriates, with dual-citizenship, or simply longstanding foreign visitors) that are also, to my mind, part of the British poetry community, such as Isobel Dixon, Emma Jones, Katy Evans-Bush, and Kathryn Maris. There are also older worthwhile “new” poets, such as Sheila Hillier, but they fall outside the scope of this current project. I’ve listed so very many names, simply to assist the reader in trying to orient themselves to what is, at least in Britain, a burgeoning time for excellent new poetry – and to suggest the bewildering challenges facing any reader, let alone reviewer or critic, aiming to make sense of such a bounty. Unlike in Canada, with Carmine Starnino and Sina Queyras (for instance), there are few well-known younger poetry critics and reviewers currently operative in Britain, seemingly willing to do the necessary evaluative weeding out; and fewer, still, invaluable studies or guides to help track the contemporary shifts and changes. It is to be hoped all this will change in the next few years. For now, British poetry doesn’t seem broken, so much as bursting – just like this first post.

Comments

[DL]

Thank you for this wide-ranging yet succinct overview of British poetry today: an eye-opening prelude to what is to come -- and very necessary as American readers know too little about developments in the British Isles. Looking forward to more about the "hybrid" or "fusion" forces, god bless 'em. Question: We keep hearing that in the recent "debate," the liberal democratic leader did better than either the labor or conservative? Is this true? Is "debate" as much a misnomer as what we have in the States? On the Typo front: when you say the "UEA mode" is the E an S in disguise? Can't wait for subsequent installments.

[Irishpoetry.blogspot.com]

A small but important semantic point, is to draw the Reader's attention to the fact that what you mean is, of course, 'a roll-call of' who you think 'the best'; not necessarily who the Best British poets of this generation, actually are, Swift.

For example, what about poets in the Heaven Tree publishing cluster that sprung out from David Morely's efforts in Warwick University, who have two poets some would consider as vital inclusions; dropping those they consider the weaker choices, George Ttoouli and Luke Kennard, say, in favor of Jon Morely and Michael McKimm?

Todd's list is, I think, imbalanced and skewered toward the straight-stream of English poetry, America. 60% are poets operating in Greater London, which makes up only 20% of the British peoples. Which begs the obvious question: Is the concentration of poetic talent there really three times above the national average?

Hmmm. I don't think so: though understand how an innaccurate opinion can be arrived at. Having lived in London for many years, until picking up the pen myself (and immediately leaving), when one began on one's own poetic journey, one knows how - like in any megatropolis and capital city - it is tempting to confuse ourselves into believing the fallacy and hype, that says poets who choose to live in London are somehow inherently 'better' at being poetic, than those from the provinces.

I myself am from a small place with a population of 12,000 people, twelve miles north of Liverpool, on the Lancashire-Merseyside border: Ormskirk - not noted for its indigenous poets, but which does have, in the town's Edge Hill University, a unique writing program.

One of the first in England, created and run by London Langpoet Robert Sheppard, whose Poetry B.A., unlike the majority in England taught by square-stream normals; founded not on the history of the English lyric, but the tradition of American Modernism.

~

One could equally opine to dump out most of the names from your top 25 Todd, arguing it is not only very unrepresentive of British poetry as it really is, as the people on the whole, but also too unadventurous.

There's a definite London bias, the more staid end of the spectrum, lots of overpraised young poets who network and know the right names, parrot the right platitudes and flatter the vanity of the right antholgist-editor-curator-poets.

Where's any of the very many talented poets from Manchester, for example, from the Other Room grouping, who many would argue represent the most linguistically innovative and exciting Group working in England at present?

What, none of the heirs to Cobbing & Co included, the radical Concrete poets?

Fellow Lancastrian Steven Waling, and plenty others, could well ask where's Scott Thurston, Tony Trehy or Carrie Etter? The poets and critics from the British avant stream, one is sure, would opine are stronger choices for a who's best 25 list.

Many would say it's obvious to the true lover of innovative poetries, that these three offer a much more exciting vision of what's possible with the English language now, the likely future direction it should take; than say, Nathan Hamilton, Jack Underwood or Melanie Challenger.

What about Claire Askew? Surely she beats Sam Riviere to inclusion in the parade?

Look at what she's doing in Edinburgh, how she's invigorated the poetry up there, at such a young age. A real talent left out for no reason. Wholly baffling some would argue.

Or, like you yourself argued for inclusion, as a British poet - into the latest Bloodaxe anthology: what about me?

Why aren't 'I' in there?

~

However, one does agree with you on James Byrne and Helen Mort. Byrne is definitley the one you rarely hear mentioned, who other competitive poets don't like to publicize, because he beats 'em all into a cocked hat for the crown of one to watch over the longer span.

These are just a minor example Swift. There are as many top 25 lists in existence, as there are people with opinions on the topic of who exactly the 'best' British poets writing today are.

One thought to clarify this because, as you've told us before at your personal blog, on numerous occassions; British poetry is riven still by an obdurate factionalism that one's American collegues, breezing into London from the higher branches of AmPo, will not necessarily apprehend when on the ground conducting a brief reading tour: as Annie Finch didn't last year, for example, and whose Harriet report on her time reciting in ye brutal olde Britain, presented a picture of serenity and accord few native dabblers would recognize or claim as an accurate rendering of Reality in the contemporary village of UK po-biz.

We had a discussion about it there last summer, which only a couple of British participants turned up to debate at.

You didn't, but believe exactly the same thing as oneself Todd, because as you wrote on Eyewear:

'I often strike some British poets as uncouth, as if it was wrong to actually question why, for instance, everyone (well, almost everyone) seems to think A is a brilliant poet, and master craftsman - or why B is still a minority taste in England. These questions are never personal - they are, in one sense, political - they seek to comprehend a system of judgements, that, with few engaged interlocutors, continues, mostly unchecked, and untested, by brunt of force - the force of those with the strongest will, and often, the best publishing jobs.

As you point out, things haven't changed a great deal since the time Cyril Connolly likened the various actors in the British poetry scene of the 1930's, to 'jackals snarling round a dried up well'. But whereas there was at least a healthy culture of critical debate then, now, the average British poet setting out, is overwhelmingly not taking advantage of the new publishing reality to develop and hone the critical part of their practice.

As was demonstrated in the recent bare-knuckle bout between you and Rodney Lumsden (editor of the Bloodaxe anthology mentioned in your piece), the laughably factional tribalism of square-stream British poetry, manifested itself in the short one line grunts on his Facebook wall; spin alley of English Letters, whose poets - as you wrote Todd, after your positive review of them had been trashed by the anti-intellectual clique who huddle there: they 'seem unused to the healthy cut and thrust of legitimate, and open, literary debate.'

British Poetry is, as you wrote on Eyewear: 'about the politics of the playground, and we all know it. Know it, but dare not speak out.'

~

Those in the Hermetic school of thought who posit: 'That which is above is the same as that which is below', could posit that there's something seriously stagnant, awry and essentially comedic in the critical life of, not only British poetry, but English Letters generally, at present.

That there's a clearly recognizable impulse that tends toward developing and deploying one's intellect for reasons of acquiring power and privilege, as opposed to articulating the purer poetry, of truth and justice.

At the macrocosmic geo-political scale, this, the argument runs, is due to a core falsity at the heart of nihilistic noughties neo-con policy, birthed by the authors of a 'war-as-profit' document: Project for the New American Century, that was enacted into State policy and political Reality, by anti-intellectuals Bush-Cheney-Rove, and which Tony Blair zelously appropriated wholesale in his keenness to wag, smile and be yo Blair the special relationship 'poodle', who dropped his common sense at the doorstep of the Oval Office, and closed his eyes to what transpired as clearly dishonest fabrication - in order to reach where he is now.

A heavily guarded multi-millionaire who enacted, what some claim, the biggest con in recent British political history; beginning with a Weapons of Mass Destruction lie, nourished in the passing himself off as a new Labour comrade whose political philosophy turned into pure Old Tory Conservative, and intensified the longer he was in power - until the sum effect of this, like the Bush administration, became an insidious dishonesty spilling out directly from the heart of New Labour government.

The deceit foisted onto a citizenry, manifest itself in a culture of secrecy and fear. What was said, was actually the opposite of what was meant, and thus the reason for us becoming a confused people who became too fearful to speak simply and honestly, for fear it might be a capital offence to question a lie by telling the truth.

At the microcosmic level, in British poetry, for example; this manifests in a collective anti-intellectual tendency of honing our intellect and whetting its focus, on privileging the acquisition of material 'success' over that of poetic power.

Because the general critical standards in, a more or less absence of debate - are so atrophied and with so few sincerely working toward the goal of making with Letters, psychological beauty and eloquence that the 'best' poetry and Criticism is capable of proving itself to be; we English perceive poetic success, in much the same way yo Blair did his 'special relationship' with George Bush II.

Not what we write but who we know.

Who the pal/s in our faction, clique and gang, are. Who's got the power of publishing and making us a star. Who's the Queen or King, the Crown force we can stand next to and assume by osmosis and association, our reputations will be secured. By who publishes pleasant comments about us, not the poetry we compose.

~

At least, that's one theory. Could be total hot air and nonsense. Who knows, hey kiddas?

Kevin

Desmond Swords

[Tom Chivers]

Todd deserves thanks for drawing attention to some excellent younger poets, and to a revivified scene here in Britain. Not the first time either - Todd has been a committed advocate for some years now.

Of course Todd's list isn't going to match up with many other people's selections. To some extent, I'm pretty tired of list-making anyway. I'm not sure how useful it really is.

NEVERTHELESS here are some of my own additions to Todd's list, which I hope might redress omissions from both "avant-garde" (as Des points out) and "performance" scenes. Although to be fair, Todd does list Keston Sutherland. Full diclosure: my own stab at it is shamelessly nepotistic as most of these people are mates or at least professional acquaintances, by virtue of the work I do in poetry.

Emily Critchley, Ross Sutherland, James Wilkes, Ben Borek, Simon Turner, Inua Ellams, Nick Potamitis, Ahren Warner

Again, this is not a definite anything - just some more names to Google.

* * *

Just a quick note to query Des's point about Londoncentricism.

Todd's post is about young poets, however you define that. It's no surprise that London is constantly overrepresented in these kinds of lists as it is a YOUNG city (over 1/5th are under 18). Traditionally on leaving university lots of young people come to London to get their foot on the job ladder. It's also the most ethnically diverse place in the country, and lots of the most interesting new work comes from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

I'm not knocking any other place in the UK, merely pointing out a few reasons why London is overrepresented.

In 2006 I produced an anthology and poetry tour called Generation Txt. On several occasions the project was criticised as being Londoncentric. This got me really pissed off, as NOT ONE of the six poets in the anthology was from London. Their origins were in fact, variously, Dorset, Cumbria, Berkshire, Nigeria/Ireland, Birmingham and Swansea. I was the only person involved in Generation Txt who was actually born and raised in London, and I was the editor/producer!

Anyway... ;-)

That's all for now.

Tom

[Tim Love]

On the Typo front: when you say the "UEA mode" is the E an S in disguise? - It's "UEA model" - UEA (The University of East Anglia) have had a Creative Writing degree course for a long time. Ian McEwan was one of their first students. As Todd says, there are many course now, but - i feel - not enough of them for long enough to have a great impact.

[Jane Holland]

I presume when you say 'younger', indicating Robertson and Sampson (b. '55 and '63 respectively) you are comparing them to, say, the late Peter Porter (aged 83) rather than Duffy and Paterson (b. '55 and '63 respectively) as your fourth paragraph would seem to suggest to a reader not familiar with these names?

[Robert Curl]

See also this post, from the other side of the divide.

[Jon]

"Full diclosure: my own stab at it is shamelessly nepotistic as most of these people are mates or at least professional acquaintances, by virtue of the work I do in poetry."

Surely Todd must admit to this too. In fact, anyone reading any discourse about the state of poetry in any country or age group today needs to be forewarned that the participants are likely to be writing very much from their own 'on the ground' perspective. A truly detached critical eye is extremely unlikely and I do wonder about the value of affecting one.

[Heidi Lynn Staples]

thanks for the post todd. wonderful paths to wander.

[Rachel Fox]

Oh goody, another list of poets.

[Merocets]

Thanks for this Todd.

Here's a (very slightly overlapping) view from the U.S.:

http://www.digitalemunction.com/2009/10/07/the-new-british-school/#more-3436

The Faber pamphlets don't have any currency or arouse any discussion there. Neither does the Bloodaxe anthology. Little England is a flagging export.

[Sina Queyras]

Thanks Todd. A well-rounded summary.

Very much looking forward to some British poetry this summer.

Here's to July.

[agutu job]

i have quite a lot. thanks. hope to integrate that into my blog ojagutu.blogspot.com

[Ben]

Quite informative and interesting topic.

[Ruby]

The Young British Poets is quite an interesting book by Todd Shrift. This book was orgone boxed in 2012.