www.modernpoetry.org.uk: OLD SITE NOW ARCHIVE
the website for British Innovative Poetry
"Best UK poetry site I've yet seen" said Ron Silliman
Welcome to one of the few genuinely creative and uncommercialised areas in British culture — Innovative Poetry. Largely ignored by mainstream media and literary culture, with little mention at the Poetry Society, sparse evidence on the shelves of Waterstones or in the arts sections of newspapers, but with its own publishing outlets and events, a fortyfive-year history showing a number of influences and strands — and a lot of exciting and intriguing writing.
Innovative poetry has become more confidently outgoing and more public, with large-scale publishing, now nationally spread readings and performances, and established support in several universities. But it is still, almost uniquely in British culture, a thriving, lively art activity that is truly independent — not dominated by money and the market, or the Arts bureaucracy, nor regarding itself as a branch of light entertainment. Real art, pursued for its own sake. And not a hermetic cut off little arty world, but one relating to our lived experience through language, making new patterns and forms to encounter our changing lives.
www.modernpoetry.org.uk introduces you to this world, online. Use the links below to access the material that interests you. If you're completely new to this writing, try the New Readers Start Here page, and take it from there.
Added 2019: be aware this is an archive of the website as I effectively abandoned updating it in 2012 (with a couple of minor alterations after that point). It has not been updated: for anything current, please use the material accessible from the main homepage. I may well add some further pages. But I am amazed this lot are still in regular use. I can't see myself updating all the mass of material listed on List of Web Pages & Web Pages & Websites Useful for Understanding British Innovative Poetry and then given some explanation and analysis on further pages. Did I really do all this?
