THE EYEWEAR MICRO-CANON

V Clay wrote to us recently here at the blog: 'It doesn't help with the critical terms and tools, but something can be done about the canon - at least on a micro scale. For example, what would be Eyewear's five "genuinely useful to have read" collections between 2001-2010? Selection would not imply endorsement of quality or taste necessarily, but would provide people with the opportunity to shape their own opinions on a manageable number of writers... And whilst an attempt to define any sort of a canon by one blogger might run the risk of egotism, there may also be readers who are looking to be able to have the common reference points that the article above makes clear the lack of.'

For the sake of clarity, here are SIX genuinely useful to read poetry collections published between 2001-2010 that any self-respecting poetry editor, poetry critic, or poetry reader interested in British poetry would want to be familiar with and wouldn't want to do without; NOTE a few significant books by Jon Stone, Emily Berry, Nerys Williams, Geoffrey Hill and Denise Riley came out either in 2000 or after 2010, that otherwise might have made this very tight short-list. It is, of course, and in keeping with the very modest request above, very very far from exhaustive, and is really a jumping off point.

Each of these books/texts is part of a significant poetry discourse, and adds something new and vital to it. The full Canon of British poetry collections from the period 2001-2010 would be far longer, of course, and would draw from many more publishers.

JH PRYNNE - POEMS

LUKE KENNARD - THE HARBOUR BEYOND THE MOVIE

JEN HADFIELD - NIGH-NO-PLACE

DALJIT NAGRA - LOOK WE HAVE COMING TO DOVER!

PATIENCE AGBABI - BLOODSHOT MONOCHROME

ANDREA BRADY - WILDFIRE: A VERSE ESSAY

Comments

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