Poetry: A partial view

VIEWPOINT By Ian McMillan Poet, radio presenter and Newsnight Review regular

Geraldine Monk's new collection "digs deeply into history and language"

I'm sitting in the Purcell Rooms in London in early December and I'm listening to some fantastic performance poetry and I'm marvelling at the state of the art of manipulating words in 2005.

There's such a variety of good work being produced and written about and, yes, performed, by old names and new voices, mature talents and up-and-comers that this is turning out to be a Vintage Year with maybe a hint of a Golden Age.

At the Purcell Rooms I'm watching (and judging, but I can't tell you the results yet) The Contenders, five excellent poets who are competing for the £10,000 Arts Foundation Prize: Matt Harvey, Kat Francois, Tim Turnbull, Zena Edwards and Shamshad Khan.

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Performance poetry

And after the evening ends I tell myself (and anybody else who'll listen, although I'm sitting in an empty railway carriage on a late train North) that this has been a night when performance poetry came of age, when performance poetry no longer needs to be seen as the rude mechanical making us laugh before the real stuff comes on.

Watch out for those people listed above in the next few years, and see if I'm right.

I'm lucky enough to present The Verb, Radio 3's Cabaret of the Word, every Saturday, and this year I've come across some fantastic poets, all of whom are great readers or performers of their work.

Gwyneth Lewis is Wales' National Poet

These include Geraldine Monk, whose new collection Escafield Hangings (West House Books) digs deeply into history and language; Frances Presley, whose collection Paravane is available from the excellent Salt Press, and who plays quietly with language until it gives in and dances.

And Gwyneth Lewis, who writes in Welsh and English, and who has just been made Wales's National Poet; her work in English has just been collected in Chaotic Angels by Bloodaxe Books, and I'd recommend it for its mixture of skill and humanity, a mixture you don't always get!

Speaking of writing in two languages, translated work and ideas of what translation is have featured highly in the poetry world this year, perhaps reflecting how the world appears to be fragmenting and shrinking at the same time.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the newly relaunched Modern Poetry in Translation, brilliantly edited by David and Helen Constantine; the new issue, just out, explores the idea of poets writing "between the languages", poets who never really feel at home in one language more than another.

If we're slipping into a Golden Age, it's a Golden Age of boundary-smashing: of poets and musicians working together; of magazines, websites and weblogs springing up all over the place

The magazine is absolutely essential reading for these fragmented times, and it includes work by Kapka Kassabova and Choman Hardi, two splendid poets published by Bloodaxe, and work by the great Palestinian poet and prose writer, Mourid Barghouti. Subscribe now, please!

So, performance is alive and kicking, translation is alive and kicking, and there seem to be more and more individual collections coming out all the time. The scene is fragmented, delightfully so, and that has to be a good thing.

I've already mentioned non-mainstream publishers like West House Books and Salt, as well as Bloodaxe, the major poetry publisher in this country. Other publishers with a healthy regard for internationalism and work outside any image of an establishment include Shearsman Press, Etruscan Books, Arc Publications, Reality Street and the online magazine Jacket.

Silliman's Blog

If you want to know what's happening in poetry across the Atlantic as well as around the world, have a look at the weblog of the poet Ron Silliman: Silliman's Blog is a combative and informative daily delight, telling me about poets I've never heard of, as well as telling me things I didn't know about poets I thought I knew well.

McMillan on Donaghy: "One of the best performers of his own work I've ever heard"

Sadly 2005 also saw the death of Michael Donaghy, a great poet and one of the best performers of his own work I've ever heard; his writing worked both on the page and in the air and that's a pretty rare thing.

But maybe it won't carry on being a rare thing; if we're slipping into a Golden Age it's a Golden Age of boundary-smashing: of poets writing comfortably in more than one language; of poets and musicians working together, and poets and artists working together; of magazines and websites and weblogs springing up all over the place, of poet after poet jostling for attention and readers and listeners.

And long may it continue! Google up all the names I've written about in this piece, read or listen to their work and I promise you won't be disappointed. And have a listen to the Verb on a Saturday night: if there's a pulse to contemporary writing and language, we'll find it and put our finger on it!

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If angry and committed poetry is what you want try, first of all, Quid 13, and the work of Keston Sutherland and Andrea Brady, both in that magazine and generally (see collections published by Barque and by Salt). There are others, but those spring to mind immediately. However, I don't think poetry is ever really likely to change somebody's mind on an issue - it is a way of thinking about issues and it may change the way you think on a broader (and deeper) level, but it is not about opinions. Not if it's any good. There's so much more than that going on.
Jonathan Clay, London

It has been a long time since I last read a contemporary poem that made me change my mind about any issue that was important to me. It has also been a long time since I last read or heard a contemporary poem which so much as tried.

Anger and commitment seem to have retreated into music, theatre and the novel. The recent poetry I have read seems overwhelmingly affable, rather than inflamed. Though this would apply much more to what I find in print than to what I discover online.
Chris O'Neill, Cardiff

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Newsnight Review is broadcast on BBC Two at 2300 GMT on Friday's - immediately after Newsnight.

The final programme of the year will be shown on Friday, 16 December, 2005.

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