Well I think that, like most lists of this kind, this one is as noticeable for who isn't on it as for who is. And there are some names on it that surprise me. We're talking, not about young people per se but about poets who have emerged in the last ten years. Hence the age range, whereas the original promotion was specifically for under-40's. (And, good! Who says you have to come on in your twenties? Look at Wallace Stevens!)
And Donaghy did call that first one “an attempt to actually manufacture a group of poets in the way that television tried to manufacture the Monkees as a pop group.” In other words, don't assume the poets themselves buy the hype.
Owen Sheers, for example, is on record as thinking that his poetry isn't much good - he says he prefers his fiction.
But I think we can look at what the list says, what view this particular arrangement presents of where poetry is at, or heading to. It's a pretty mainstream list, though Patience Agbabi is a bit more performance-y. There are a lot of women on it. And there's a broad age range. But if the group as a whole seems samey, isn't that down to the judges' tastes, rather than the real state of poetry in the UK? For instance where's John Stammers? He'sup-&-coming - in fact, arrived, I'd say. His work is lush, sophisticated, stylistically dazzling, formally impressive, allusive, cool - and totally unlike anything on this list. Where's Roddy Lumsden? He has a wry, hip take on things and a characterisation within his poems like no one else currently writing. They're both fond of word play and teasing out meanings, and both have a subtle command of tone which I'd venture that they both deploy in ways many of the listed writers don't.
I'm still gutted about Dorothy Molloy dying just before her first collection came out last year (from Faber); she was exciting.
But even if we say there isn't so much variation - consider that England itself is smaller than NEW England. How much variety can a place so small produce in any given year? And if they've all been to the same workshop (which they haven't - but even if they had), how many good workshops ARE there in a small place? How different will they BE? (I know; & the Poetry School is running a course on avant-garde poetry this term, & another on prose poems, anyway.)
So this is devil's-advocate stuff here, but I thought I'd throw out a few questions. There are poets I admire on the list.
KEB
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