Sorry Janice. When I started writing poetry a few years ago I joined the Poetry Society, which includes a subscription to Poetry Review, which seems to pretty much represent the Establishment of UK poetry. I disliked it enormously. Almost all of it seemed to me gimmicky and/or incomprehensible. The society was going through a lot of upheaval at the time – I would say the issue guest-edited by George Szirtes seemed a big improvement over the others that year; but at the end of the year I cancelled my membership. Maybe I’ll try again one day to see if it’s improved under the leadership of Maurice Riordan.
The poetry I like best is what I read here and in form-friendly webzines (Light, LUPO, Snakeskin, Mezzo Cammin, etc), but I do also go to the University library sometimes to read print-only journals like Measure and to check out books by what poets they carry. And I do force myself to include modern free verse in that: Don Paterson, Gwyneth Lewis, Helen Mort and Simon Armitage are some of the ones of that ilk I like better than most. But my favourite (non-Eratospherean) living poets are Wendy Cope and Sophie Hannah.
I rarely buy poetry – this is partly me being cheap and partly my strange inability to read books or magazines I have bought. I’m much more likely to read something I’ve checked out of a library because it comes with a time limit, even if objectively I would much prefer to read a book sitting on my shelf at home.
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