Tom Phillips reviews City State: New London Poetry Edited by Tom Chivers City State ’s editor Tom Chivers has been very careful with his choice of sub-title. It’s not, as he points out in his introduction, ‘ The New London Poetry’, it’s the much more open-ended (and significantly less megalomaniacal) ‘New London Poetry’. As they say on certain advertisements: terms and conditions apply; other new London poetries may be available. In short, Chivers actively discourages the idea that the twenty-seven contributors to his anthology represent a movement, a group or anything other than a rattle bag of writers who just happen to live in London. His only ambition, he says, is to offer a ‘snap-shot’, something ‘characteristic rather than representative; impressionistic rather than photographic’. True, there’s a slight whiff of pragmatic, pre-emptive apology to those who didn’t make the cut about this, but after the wearying tub-thumping adopted by anthologists who seem hell-bent on booming...
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