Sarah Broom now gives the world her study, Contemporary British and Irish Poetry.Eyewear welcomes her broad church attention to both mainstream and experimental (as well as performance-oriented) poetries and poetics, and the inclusion of Don Paterson, Denise Riley, Simon Armitage and Jackie Kay for serious study is all good news.
However, to say "future books of this kind will no doubt include the likes of" or "there are many I would have loved to include but could not" followed by names like: Pascale Petit, Paul Farley, Alice Oswald, Caroline Bergvall, John Burnside, Derek Mahon, J.H. Prynne, Tom Paulin W.N. Herbert, Lavinia Greenlaw, etc, is to be slightly too limited in scope; and George Szirtes, Roddy Lumsden, Polly Clark, David Harsent, Michael Donaghy and Sinead Morrissey are not even regrettably excluded.
According to the author: "this book has been written, for the most part, in New Zealand". Indeed, this would have been a fine manuscript in 1999, but the 21st century has seen major shifts of emphasis, and new directions, that are simply not tracked or traced here, at all.
Perhaps the book's largest blindspot is the absence of any mention, even in the extensive bibliography, of the "poets against the war" movement of 2003-2004, which, after all, involved thousands of poets, use of the Internet, created much debate about the role of poetry in relation to politics, and resulted in at least three key anthologies, from publishers like Faber and Salt.
Broom's Introduction offers a sentence or two about the Internet, as follows: "The internet in particular, which has since its beginnings been crucial to the experimental poetry scene, offers the possibility of truly international exchange and awareness, something which is currently being actualized by online magazines like Jacket and Contemporary Poetry Review, as well as many online discussion lists."
Broom misses an opportunity to mention any of the several very good long-running British or Irish online magazines, and instead mentions two, from Australia and America - and then mentions that CPR often has "700" visitors a day. Nthposition's e-book was downloaded over 150,000 times (as reported in The Times) and has had as many as 10,000 visitors a day, but is not mentioned.
The book does offer excellent insights in to poets I admire, and it at least sets out to explore issues and themes that deserve an airing. The work on Muldoon is very good.
Three specs out of five.
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