On Cynicism
I’d like to say a few words about a subject I don’t often see explored in writing on contemporary poetry, in the hope that perhaps some of the sentiments expressed will chime with others. This year I was lucky enough…
After a hundred years, does Imagism still matter?
Last month was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Imagism. In September 1912 Ezra Pound was in the British Museum tearoom with Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), a girlfriend from his University of Pennsylvania days, and her English fiancé, Richard Aldington. …
Blog Review 14: Christopher Crawford Reviews Tim Cumming’s ‘The Rapture’
The Rapture, Tim Cumming’s first book since 2004’s The Rumour, is divided into three sections: Chapel of Carbon, Improvisations and First Music. The short poems in the first section find portents in everyday occurrences. Cumming is also a film-maker and…
Hummingbirds, ghazals and pistachio nuts
In January 2012 I was notified that I had won the Judge’s Prize in the Magma competition 2011 judged by George Szirtes. The winning poem was “Hummingbird”. It was the first major competition I had won and, being a relative…
Blog Review 13: Mark Burnhope Reviews ‘Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese poetry’ edited by W.N. Herbert & Yang Lian with Brian Holton & Qin Xiaoyu
In his essay concluding Jade Ladder, Brian Holton discusses the trials, tribulations, negotiations and compromises involved in translating Chinese poetry into English. Some of Yang Lian and Qin Xiaoyu’s first choices were shelved, he writes, “because the joke just wasn’t…
The importance of place
Where do you write your poems? We’re fascinated by the places where poetry happens, the idea that inspiration might not just be a moment-in-time but in a moment-in-place. The Guardian’s regular feature on is popular for just that reason: there’s…
Blog Review 12: Andrew Sclater reviews Kirsten Irving’s ‘What To Do’ and David Tait’s ‘Love’s Loose Ends’
Emotional difficulties lie behind both these pamphlets. For Tait, love ends repeatedly in strange, uplifted sadnesses. For Irving, fear and unreason lie in wait. Overall, Irving’s view is the bleaker, as some of her last lines testify: “..I stand like…
Poetry and Basketball
The latter half of my youth revolved around hoops, orbiting wide rings, listening out for the net’s swish, attempting to make more fluid, more instinctive, ‘mo’ butter’ the complex body geometry of knowing instinctively how far you are from the…
Blog Review 11 – Katherine Stansfield Reviews Beverley Bie Brahic’s ‘White Sheets’
White Sheets, a Poetry Book Society recommendation, is Beverley Bie Brahic's second collection. Born in Canada, she lives in France and the US and has translated a number of books by Cixous, Kristeva, and Derrida. A fascination with language's mutability…
Poetry: What’s Gained in Translation
It was Robert Frost who first said that poetry is what gets “lost in translation”. This week, with the gaze of the literary world trained on the South Bank and its ambitious Poetry Parnassus project, bringing together writers from all…
Supported by Arts Council England