Anthologies, Literary Histories & Critical Texts

Anthologies

I've linked to this section a page listing who's in each anthology, Anthologies Anatomised, including also the books I've labelled "Poets on What They Do" which are effectively anthologies, plus the Chicago Review British Poetry Issue (more rightly Cambridge Poetry issue). You'll notice too that some of these are deliberately representative anthologies, but others curiously more representative by focusing on work in a specific form or with a single theme/context.

1. Current

Most recent first ...

edited Chris Goode, Better Than Language: An anthology of new modernist poetries (ganzfeld, 2011)

Thirteen new young-to-youngish poets, tending to London/Cambridge/Sussex connections, but with a fair diversity, and together making a very powerful impact

edited James Wilkes, Herbarium (Capsule press/Wayward Plants, 2011)

An anthology of poems and songs written by 55 poets celebrating and exploring the contemporary resonances of medicinal plants and herbs for the Urban Physic Garden

edited Mark Cobley, Eighteens (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2011)

Eighteen poems of eighteen words each by eighteen British (largely) and American poets

edited Harriet Tarlo, A Ground Aslant – Radical Landscape Poetry (Shearsman, 2011)

16 poets whose work engages with that apparently most conservative of topoi for British poetry through innovative form and style.

edited John Goodby and Andrew Duncan, Angel Exhaust 21: Each Aeon Free After the First One — The Welsh Underground (Summer, 2010)

Book length magazine on the Anglo-Welsh avant-garde (widely defined), with work from 16 poets (Peter Finch to Rhys Trimble via John James, Iain Sinclair and Zoë Skoulding), plus essays etc (including on Welsh language poetry and the avant-garde).

edited Carrie Etter, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearsman, 2010)

A wide range of contemporary innovative British women writers

edited Tom Chivers, City State: New London Poetry (Penned in the Margins, 2009)

Work from a wide range of young London-based poets

edited Jeff Hilson, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008)

A superb gathering of what a huge number of contemporary British poets (largely) are doing with and to this inescapable and foundational form.

edited Rod Mengham & John Kinsella, Vanishing Points: New Modernist Poems (Salt, 2004)

Containing over thirty poets from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it presents an alternative vision of late Twentieth century poetic achievement: international, politically engaged and radical in vision.

edited Keith Tuma, Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford UP NY, 2001)

Famous for its presentation side-by-side, on a chronological basis of Bob Cobbing next to Philip Larkin, Lee Harwood next to Seamus Heaney, Veronica Forrest-Thompson next to Liz Lochhead, this book gives the best all-round view of British poetry since the Lucie-Smith anthology, and over a wider time-scale

edited Nicholas Johnson, Foil: defining poetry 1985-2000 (etruscan books, 2000)

A deliberate attempt to represent a range of then new and generally unanthologised poets. Reviewed by Andrew Duncan on Great Works.

2. Historic

In historical seqence ...

edited Michael Horovitz, Children of Albion (Penguin, 1969)

Pure Sixties neo-Blakean ecstasy! Pioneers, beats, Cambridge poets, Michael X, John Arden, Lee Harwood (everyone bar the Liverpool Poets)

edited Edward Lucie-Smith, British Poetry Since 1945 (Penguin, 1970)

Genuine attempt to map all varieties of British poetry. Don't bother with the counter-revolutionary 1985 edition!

edited Andrew Crozier and Tim Longville, A Various Art (Carcanet, 1987; Paladin, 1990)

The first version of the Cambridge School, plus friends

edited Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar, Ken Edwards and Eric Mottram, The New British Poetry 1968-1988 (Paladin, 1988)

John Muckle was reponsible for this anthology, with separate sections for Black British Poetry, Quote Feminist Unquote Poetry, A Treacherous Assault on British Poetry ("Cambridge", "London" and other poets publishing since 1960s) and Some Younger Poets (the new generation of the "linguistically innovative poets" – mainly London-based)

edited Maggie O'Sullivan, Out of Everywhere: Linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK (Reality Street, 1996)
edited Iain Sinclair, Conductors of Chaos (Picador, 1996)

A wide range of poets, including some performance poets (and short selections of a number of "Forties" generation poets also)

edited Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. Volume Two: From Postwar to Millennium (University of California, 1998)
edited Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain, Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 (Wesleyan UP, 1999)
edited Keith Tuma, Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford UP NY, 2001)

Even more historic

edited Kenneth Rexroth, The New British Poets An Anthology, (New Directions, 1948)

The World We Have Lost. A cool and intelligent look at British poetry of the 1940s by the American poet Kenneth Rexroth, which maps out well a literary culture shortly to be decimated and officially erased from English culture by the White Terror of the 1950s. A predecessor as it were of the Tuma anthology. Book digitally archived at the Internet Archive.

Literary Histories

Peter Barry, Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court (Salt, 2006)

There is much detailed discussion of the institutional manoeuvrings in this famous episode. But it also acts as a very good introduction to the history of the 'poetry network' in which 'avant-garde' or 'experimental' writing is dominant, its present status, and to the actual writerly qualities of the poetry. This is the book which acts as the most accessible introduction to avant-garde British poetry (if you don't get too bogged down in the Poetry Society minutes!).

Andrew Duncan, The Failure of Conservatism in Modern British Poetry (Salt, 2003)
Andrew Duncan, Centre and Periphery in Modern British Poetry (Liverpool UP, 2005)
Andrew Duncan, Origins of the Underground: British poetry between apocryphon and incident light, 1933–79 (Salt, 2008)
Andrew Duncan, The Council of Heresy: A Primer of Poetry in a Balkanised Terrain (Shearsman, 2009)
Robert Sheppard, The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and Its Discontents 1950-2000 (Liverpool UP, 2005)
Robert Sheppard, When Bad Times Made for Good Poetry: episodes in the history of the poetics of innovation (Shearsman Books 2011)

Sheppard discusses a range of writers and contexts in the period between the warfare at the Poetry Society in 1976 and the near present, concentrating most on the 1980s, and on poets' construction/use of poetics. Detailed, and rewarding on both past and present.

Randall Stevenson, The Last Of England? The Oxford English Literary History Volume 12. 1960-2000 (OUP, 2004)

Poets on What They Do

edited Tim Allen and Andrew Duncan, Don't Start Me Talking: Interviews with Contemporary Poets (Salt, 2007)

Some excellent interviews, deeply revealing about the writing of poetry and about specific points in the development of innovative British poetry; but, really, guys, only one woman poet!

edited Tom Chivers, Stress Fractures: Essays on Poetry (Penned in the Margins, 2010)

Emphasis on performance, with a very wide spread of contemporary approaches discussed

John Kinsella, Disclosed poetics: Beyond landscape and lyricism, (Manchester UP [Angelaki Humanities], 2007)

A detailed personal account, with many examples

edited Rupert Loydell, Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: Manifestos and Unmanifestos (Salt, 2009)

A curious and diverting assembly from a very wide range of poets

edited Denise Riley, Poets on Writing: Britain, 1970-1991 (Macmillan: Language, Discourse Society, 1992)

A wide range of very varied but often very fruitful pieces on "the working processes" of poetry, by, largely Cambridge poets (60s–70s) and friends

Critical Texts

Ian Davidson, Ideas of Space in Contemporary Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Tony Lopez, Meaning Performance: Essays on Poetry (Salt, 2006)
Anthony Mellors, Late modernist poetics: From Pound to Prynne (Manchester UP [Angelaki Humanities], 2010 [paperback ed.])
Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Poetic Artifice: A theory of twentieth century poetry (Manchester UP, 1978)
John Wilkinson, The Lyric Touch: Essays on the Poetry of Excess (Salt, 2007)
Writers and Their Work (Northcote House in association with the British Council)

Relevant titles include:

William Rowe, Three Modern Lyric Poets (Lee Harwood, Barry MacSweeney & Chris Torrance)
Alison Mark, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Language Poetry
Robert Sheppard, Iain Sinclair

Salt

Apart from their publications of poetry, other relevant series & titles include:

Reconstruction — essays on poetry
Salt Companions to Literature:
- Norman Jope, Paul Scott Derrick & Catherine E. Byfield, The Salt Companion to Richard Berengarten
- edited Cris Cheek & Robert Hampson, The Salt Companion to Allen Fisher
- edited William Rowe, The Salt Companion to Bill Griffiths
- edited Robert Sheppard, The Salt Companion to Lee Harwood
- edited Simon Perril, The Salt Companion to John James
- edited Scott Thurston, The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk
- edited Lawrence Upton, The Salt Companion to Maggie O'Sullivan
- edited Simon Perril, The Salt Companion to Denise Riley
- edited Adam Piette & Kate Price, The Salt Companion to Peter Robinson
- edited Harry Gilonis, The Salt Companion to Colin Simms
Studies in Literature and Culture
- Robert Bond, Iain Sinclair

List of Anthologies, Literary Histories & Critical Texts