A collection of poetry written in the second half of the century. Includes English, Irish, Welsh and Scots poets, as well as other nationalities living here and writing in English.

Combining detailed explorations of both mainstream and experimental poets with a clear historical and literary overview, Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry offers readers at all levels an ideal guide to the rich body of poetic works published in Britain and Ireland over the last half-century. Features detailed discussions of individual poems that are widely available in anthologies and selected poems volumes Pays explicit attention to how to read the poems, focusing on language and form and the institutional conditions of literary possibility in which poets worked Includes poets of all types and styles from throughout the post-war period, including canonical and mainstream poets alongside experimental poets, women, and poets of color

This volume introduces students to the most important figures, movements and trends in post-war British and Irish poetry. An historical overview and critical introduction to the poetry published in Britain and Ireland over the last half-century Introduces students to figures including Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Andrew Motion Takes an integrative approach, emphasizing the complex negotiations between the British and Irish poetic traditions, and pulling together competing tendencies and positions Written by critics from Britain, Ireland, and the United States Includes suggestions for further reading and a chronology, detailing the most important writers, volumes and events

From Tottel's Miscellany (1557) to the last twentieth-century Oxford Book of English Verse (1999), anthologies have been a prime institution for the preservation and mediation of poetry. The importance of anthologies for creating and re-creating the canon of English poetry, for introducing ‘new' programmes of poetry, as a record of changing poetic fashions, audience tastes and reading practices, or as a profitable literary commodity has often been asserted. Despite its impact, however, the poetry anthology in itself has attracted surprisingly little critical interest in Britain or elsewhere in the English-speaking world. This volume is the first publication to explore the largely unmapped field of poetry anthologies in Britain. Essays written from a wide range of perspectives in literary and cultural studies, and the point of view of poets, editors, publishers and cultural institutions, aim to do justice to the typological, functional and historical variety with which this form of publication has manifested itself - from early modern print culture to the postmodern age of the world wide web.

This book provides an overview of poetry from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland from the postwar period through to the twenty-first century.

The Poetry of Saying unearths a secret history of fifty years of experimental British verse, revealing and illuminating the daring work of British poets who have spent a half-century rewriting the rules of English poetry. Poet Robert Sheppard considers individual poets such as Roy Fisher and Lee Harwood as well as the role of poetry magazines and the Poetry Society. Sheppard's position at the center of the 1950s British Poetry Revival enables him to offer an insider's commentary on the social, political, and historical background of this particularly fertile and exciting period in British poetry.

Women's Experimental Poetry in Britain 1970-2010 examines a critically neglected but significant body of contemporary writing, placing it within wider social and political contexts. Ranging from Geraldine Monk's ventriloquizing of the Pendle witches to Denise Riley's fiercely self-critical lyric poems—from the multi-media experiments of Maggie O'Sullivan to the globally aware, politicized sequences of Andrea Brady and Jennifer Cooke—it offers a needed theoretical look at women's experimental poetry in Britain over the past forty years, drawing on the likes of Julia Kristeva and others to show how the female poetic voice has constantly negotiated with dominant systems of representation.