Each of these sections is also available as a separate page with comment on, and often quotations from, the sites – click on the section headings. Note also that all these documents will open in a fresh window or tab. What may be the most informative texts for the reader fresh to all this are those marked with an asterisk *.
Do bear in mind, that although I have tried to select sites that offer clear and explicit comment, history and analysis, the discussion of poetry can rapidly get very technical and detailed, particularly when performed by academics or poets. A further problem with some sites is that they were often aimed at an audience of those involved already in this poetic culture, and are therefore assuming knowledge by the reader. A final warning is that a few of the pieces in (2) How the Poetry Can Be Read (and Written) do refer mainly to non-British poetry, but in a way that throws light on techniques and procedures used in contemporary innovative British poetry.
This list was last checked and added to February 21, 2011.
- * Tim Love, Poetry and Society in the UK
- * Ken Edwards, Introduction: The two poetries
- * Peter Middleton, The Poetry Review Essay: Recognition (Poetry Review, Vol 94 No 1, Spring 2004)
- * moderated by Catherine Wagner, Post-Marginal Positions: Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community A Cross-Atlantic Forum
- * Kent Johnson, The New British School
- Peter Finch, British Poetry Since 1945
- The origins and trajectories of English avant garde poetry in the last 40 years: A dialogue between Peter Riley and Spilios Argyropoulos
- John Matthias, British Poetry at Y2K
- ed. Robert Sheppard, Turning the Pages
- Alan Halsey, An Open Letter to Will Rowe
- Tim Love, The formalist/free avant-garde/mainstream UK/US splits
- Tim Love, The poetry mainstream
- Andrew Duncan, legends 5: An era of rising property prices: Conservative poetry
- Andrew Duncan, map of 7-volume work on modern British poetry: Map of the Affluence work
- Words in pictures: Keston Sutherland
- Robert Archambeau, "Its Chief Weapon is Excess": Chris Hamilton-Emery on Cambridge Poetry
- Amy De'Ath, Poetry Publishing: As It Stands: Innovation, the Post-Avant, and Current Publishing Practices
- Barry Schwabsky, The Verge of a Language
- Interview with Sean Bonney
- 12 or 20 (small press) questions: Ken Edwards on Reality Street
- * Matthew Caley, Aspects of the Contemporary (ii): Neo-hogbutchererbigdriftities: tracing a line out of the mainstream
- * Will Rowe, Invisible Power
- * Ian Davidson, Ideas of Space in Contemporary Poetry — click on "Read a sample chapter"
- * Johan de Wit, Statements — You could have fooled me [14 July 2007]
- * J H Prynne, Poetic Thought
- * J H Prynne, Difficulties in the Translation of "Difficult" Poems
- * Jeffrey Side, The Escape From Coherence: An Introduction to Creative Reading
- * Jeffrey Side, Poetry in Turbulence: (or how to enjoy poetry without really understanding it)
- * Jeffrey Side, Empirical and Non-Empirical Identifiers
- * Joe Kennedy, A Challenge to Poetic Generosity
- * Arduity: clarifying difficult poetry
- * Harriet Tarlo, Introduction to A Ground Aslant
- * edited Philip Terry, after oulipo
- * Lawrence Upton, Non-determinist responses
- * Brian Kim Stefans, Introduction to Electronic Literature: a freeware guide
- Sheila E. Murphy, Blueprinting the Poetic Structure
- Tim Love, The Avant-garde and Language poetry
- Andrew Duncan, Missing Bandwidths
- Andrew Duncan, Chaotic Dynamics: Conductors of Chaos, edited by Iain Sinclair
- Andrew Duncan, Kicking Shit with Arvel Watson and C.Day Lewis: part 2 of the review of Conductors of Chaos
- William Watkin, Poetry Machines: Repetition in the Early Poetry of Kenneth Koch
- William Watkin , "Though we keep company with cats and dogs": Onomatopoeia, Glossolalia and Happiness in the work of Lyn Hejinian and Giorgio Agamben
- Peter Riley in conversation with Todd Nathan Thorpe
- Reginald Shepherd, Defining "Post-Avant-Garde" Poetry
- Marianne Morris, Total Literary Stuffheads
- Ira Lightman, Performing the (e.g. Visual) Poem
- eds. Robin Purves & Sam Ladkin, Complicities: British Poetry 1945-2007
- Christopher Funkhouser, Digital Poetry: A Look at Generative, Visual, and Interconnected Possibilities in its First Four Decades
- N. Katherine Hayles, Electronic Literature: What is it?
(a) Good Places to Look
- * David Caddy: So Here We Are — essays on David Caddy's blog on Bill Griffiths, Thomas A Clark, Allen Fisher, Basil Bunting, Tom Raworth, John Kinsella, J H Prynne, Andrew Crozier, John Riley and David Gascoyne.
- * Intercapillary/Space Interviews by Edmund Hardy with Giles Goodland, Peter Larkin, Frances Presley, John Seed and Robert Sheppard + Chris Goode interviewed by Lawrence Upton
- * Intercapillary Space Constellations — Douglas Oliver, Peter Riley, Seán Rafferty, Alice Notley and Geraldine Monk
- * Poetry International Web — featuring Elisabeth Bletsoe, Vahni Capildeo, Alan Halsey, Lee Harwood, Anthony Joseph, Chris McCabe, Frances Presley, Richard Price, Denise Riley and Peter Riley
- * Handlist of late 20th century poets (part 1), Handlist of late 20th century poets (part 2:born after circa 1950), Handlist, part 3: Mid century poets — Andrew Duncan's exhaustive, wide-ranging and highly catholic listing of significant British poets.
- * Wikipedia — some useful pages
- Tony Frazer, Recommendations
- Delirium's Library — many poets reviewed on blog by Sophie Mayer
- Maintenant Poetry Interviews
- Arduity: clarifying difficult poetry
(b) On Specific Poets
- Simon Jenner, Janus Masks: on the Many Facets of Richard Berengarten's Work (aka Richard Burns)
- Strictly Speaking on Caroline Bergvall (Curated and Co-ordinated by Sophie Robinson)
- * Interview with Sean Bonney
- The Poetry of Sean Bonney: Form and Content in Poisons, their Antidotes — Mark Jackson
- Jeff Hilson, Blade Pitch Control Unit – old review — on Sean Bonney
- Andrea Brady Interview by Andrew Duncan
- Richard Owens, CRIS CHEEK: PART: SHORT LIFE HOUSING
- Robin Purves, What Veils in Andrew Crozier's "The Veil Poem"
- Paul A. Green, Lost in the City: Ken Edwards, Nostalgia for Unknown Cities
- Some fragments about Allen Fisher's work: A collage of responses assembled by AF, May 2004
- * Alan Halsey interviewed by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino
- David Annwn, Master of the Five Dimensions: Alan Halsey Nearing Sixty
- Emerging glorious from the clouds: Mark Ford celebrates Lee Harwood's long and confident career
- Peter Philpott, Profile of the poet Paul Holman
- * Keep looking up! Charles Bainbridge celebrates the marriage of lyricism and experimentation in John James's Collected Poems
- David Jones: Artist and Poet
- Michael S. Begnal, Polar/ cold/ marks terminus — on Trevor Joyce
- Tony Lopez Interview by Scott Thurston
- Richard Makin, St Leonards, by Michael Peverett
- Geraldine Monk: The Madness of Sonnets
- Douglas Oliver: Radial Symposium
- * Robert Potts, Through the oval window — on J H Prynne
- * Robert Potts, J. H. Prynne, a poet for our times
- * Rod Mengham and John Kinsella, An Introduction to the Poetry of J H Prynne
- * Ian Brinton: Prynne in Prospect
- On the Poems of J.H. Prynne (Glossator Vol. 2)
- Matthew Hall, Wound Response, Tacit Knowledge and Residual Reading: Dissecting Matrices of Information in J.H. Prynne's Late-Modernist Poetry
- Steven Waling, An English Objectivist: Elaine Randell
- * Joe Kennedy, A Challenge to Poetic Generosity — on Tom Raworth
- Peter Riley Symposium
- Peter Riley in conversation with Todd Nathan Thorpe
- Robert Hampson, Gavin Selerie's "Roxy" and "Le Fanu's Ghost"
- Azimuth and Digression: Gavin Selerie interviewed by Andrew Duncan
- Andrew Duncan, Melting Into Nature: Carrier of the Seed by Jeffrey Side
- Robert Bond, Babylon Afterburn: Adventures in Iain Sinclair's "The Firewall"
- The Poetry of Martin Stannard: Special Feature
- Neil Pattison, "The mirrors are tired of our faces": Changing the Subject in the Poetry of Veronica Forrest-Thomson
- Laurie Duggan, On Gael Turnbull's Collected Poems: with a digression on his aleatory, kinetic and other off-the-page practices
- * Johan de Wit, Statements — You could have fooled me [14 July 2007]
A Quick Introduction to the Poetry of . . .
- * Robert Sheppard, A History of the Other — this material is a series of blog entries, a little cumbersome to locate and navigate in order. The link here is to the analysis of these sections on the more detailed Great Works webpage.
- * British Poetry Revival (Wikipedia)
- * Ken Edwards, UK Small Press Publishing Since 1960: The Transatlantic Axis
- *
Piers Hugill, An overview of contemporary British poetry since 1977
- Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain, "A Fair Field Full of Folk": Other British and Irish Poetry since 1970
- Nate Dorward, (review of) Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970
- Andrew Duncan, legends 6: Sound as a volume; or, real space as fictive space
- Andrew Duncan, legends 7: Avant garde neo-classicism
- Andrew Duncan, Groups and Boundaries: The Field of Poetry Around 1995
- Andrew Duncan, Such that commonly each: A Various Art and the Cambridge Leisure Centre
- Poets in a Lens, by David James
- 'Carshalton MOB' special edition: beneath the underground
- A C Evans, Voices in Denial: Poetry and Post-Culture
- Robert Sheppard, Poets Behaving Badly (review of Peter Barry, Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court [Salt, 2006])
- Alan Brownjohn, Poetry Wars (review of Peter Barry, Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and the Battle of Earls Court [Salt, 2006])
- Andrew Duncan, A Reply (to Voices in Denial)
- Peter Barry, The Fall of Fulcrum
- Lawrence Upton, Writers Forum (Workshop & Publications)
- Sam Ladkin and Robin Purves, An Introduction to Chicago Review, British Poetry Issue (53:1)
- Peter Riley, An Endnote
- Peter Finch, Sound Poetry: Sound Poetry in the UK