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Welcome to British poetry - May 2007
May 01, 2007
The three poets Tony has chosen are Elisabeth Bletsoe, Frances Presley and Peter Riley. They have all been active in the UK’s small press poetry scene for many years - decades, in Peter Riley’s case. They represent a tiny proportion of poets in the UK who are pushing at the boundaries of conventional language, writing processes and also conventions of reading poetry. It’s easy to end up sounding terribly reductive when describing poetry of this nature, where meanings are densely layered like rock strata, so rather than go on, I’ll just suggest that you have a look for yourself. Shearsman Books
Welcome to Poetry International Web’s seventh UK issue, in which we send our fondest fare-thee-wells to Andrew Bailey. Andrew has been the Managing Editor of these pages for The Poetry Society, since the UK domain launched in November 2005. I'll be continuing the trend he established over the past year and a half, filling in the pieces of our UK poetry jigsaw, issue by issue.
This spring we invited Tony Frazer, editor of Shearsman Books and Shearsman Magazine, to pick three of his favourites for us. Tony has been editing Shearsman magazine and Shearsman Books since 1981. Based in the south west of England, currently Exeter, Shearsman is at the centre of a burgeoning network of experimental poets, including names like Tony Lopez, Luke Kennard, Rupert Loydell (of Stride Books, also based in the south west), Andy Brown and many others. In Tony Frazer’s own words, the editorial ethos (specifically for the magazine, though it is also reflected in the books they publish) has “a clear inclination towards the more exploratory end of the current spectrum.”The three poets Tony has chosen are Elisabeth Bletsoe, Frances Presley and Peter Riley. They have all been active in the UK’s small press poetry scene for many years - decades, in Peter Riley’s case. They represent a tiny proportion of poets in the UK who are pushing at the boundaries of conventional language, writing processes and also conventions of reading poetry. It’s easy to end up sounding terribly reductive when describing poetry of this nature, where meanings are densely layered like rock strata, so rather than go on, I’ll just suggest that you have a look for yourself. Shearsman Books
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