Poets: The Next Generation. Reactions/thoughts?

Oops I left out Matthew Francis.

Of the 20, I have never heard of 6. I have read 9, am a 'fan' of maybe 3, and have met 4. Oh dear. Call myself a poet?

It makes me want to get out and read a bit more, so I suppose it's a successful promotion.

Maybe I'll get myself on the 2014 list - Poets: Deep Space 9.

I have interviewed three of those peots!

The list seems fairly arbitrary: any generation that includes both Jacob Polley and Maurice Riordan is elastic to the point of absoidity. I'm not sure that any of them, bar Farley, are actually that good, either. There's certainly not a Maxwell or an Armitage or a Paterson or a Shapcott or a Greenlaw among them. It's tempting to say that this list bears the same relation to the NewGen as the new wave of new wave did to punk.

I have read 7, am a 'fan' of maybe 3 too, and have me none (thank god, so far).

To the 'good' list I would add, perhaps, with hesitancy, Alice Oswald.

I have never heard of 11. 'Oh dear', indeed.

Yes, I own no poets but I meant I have 'met' none.

JtN: do you think that Maxwell, Armitage, Shapcott and Greenlaw are either a Maxwell, Armitage, Shapcott, or Greenlaw?

I think that that is a silly question.

I am a bit surprised I don't recognize any names. Is there a gaping chasm b/n young American and British poetry? (Maybe it is my own tunnel-vision...) Do these people tend to be as Ashbery influeneced as I massively generalize a lot of young American poetry to be?

I don't think I know many 'emerging' young American poets, either. (Would appreciate some suggestions though bnw!) Maybe there is just so much being written these days that in all but a few cases you don't get to be international until you're fairly well-established in your own country? And as noted, there are quite a few of those poets above who draw a blank with some Brits too.

Of that list, the ones *I* know are not Ashberry-influenced I wouldn't say, but there is certainly a school that is. The current editorship of Poetry Review seems to favour them...

As JtN says, it does read like a very arbitrary list.

Incidentally, I think Paul Farley and Alice Oswald at least may both be 'better' than Simon Armitage, who I have come to find a bit tedious.

I can't remember the last time I bought a poetry book - shame on me. It was probably Paul Farley when he read for us. Probably the only other one of the NextGen whose book I might buy is Catherine Smith, out of Sussex solidarity and because we read together recently, and it just gets embarrassing if you keep having to say you haven't read iy. Oh and I do quite like some of her stuff.

But you can get things in the library pretty smartish these days, and what with all the anthologisation going on it's rare that I'd love a poet enough to fork out for their own collection. Well, I would if I *had* the money maybe.

Very few of these poets are post-Ashbery, I think. Post-Muldoon, filtered through Paterson, possibly. It's odd that very few of them would be published in 'Poetry Review' these days.

There is a huge gap between American and English poetry. Stephen Burt does a manful job of trying to bridge it - we did a special issue on youngish Americans with him when I was at PR: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/review/pr88-1/pr88-1.htm

I can't remember the last day I didn't buy a poetry book. :/

I am envious. (Although I remain pretty loyal to the library even in times of richness, IIRC.)

'absoidity'

Presumably Cozen doesn't mean it, literally?

His silly question is good - and I agree with it, in a way.

I agree that Farley is better than all those poets I have never read too, naturally.

Post-Muldoonism: what an idea.

Is Robertson the only Scot in this list?

I would recommend Oswald's Dart.

I just looked at the picture.

Ron Silliman refers to it as "the worst collection of poetry" he has ever read. Hm!

Dart?

I have read the article now. I enjoyed it very much. They seem like a nice bunch. It's also nice to see ugly people in a magazine. I was delighted to discover that I had been in the same publication as one of these people. I should have known that the funny-looking bloke at the end was our old friend 'Can, Velvets, Stooges', he's got Papercuts eyes. I was also encouraged to see that quite few of them are older than me, yet can still qualify as 'new'. Not only has it made me want to read some poetry, it has made me want to write some too. I've got my first title: 'Right Said Fred, Fast Food Rockers, The Farm'. It's going to be about snorting sherbert dib-dabs through Ker-Plunk straws.

Is Simon Armitage stuff usually as bright, entertaining and readable as this article? I think I read somewhere (else) that he was a bit of a bore. Perhaps somebody was just 'having a go'.

'Dart' sounds great, but I haven't read it. One of my long-cherished projects is a television series about the river Trent, written by me and presented by Billy Brewer.