Description
Book SynopsisThe Best British Poetry 2014 presents the finest and most engaging poems found in literary magazines and webzines over the past year. The material gathered represents the rich variety of current UK poetry. Each poem is accompanied by a note by the poet explaining the inspiration for the poem.
Trade ReviewMark Ford has gathered together poems born of London, in conversation with London, in combat with London, in awe of London, most of which were first published in London, centre of print and power. Covering six and a half centuries of wandering, whoring, watching, drinking, dancing, praying, building, courting, and cursing, here can be found Wordsworth’s ‘endless stream of men and moving things’, even when, as Fleur Adcock puts it, ‘the traffic’s as abominable as ever’. Packed as the Underground, this is as essential a guide to London as the A–Z.
-- Frances Wilson
...the boy Ford done good, has done us proud, has played a blinder. I have never come across a London anthology... as rich, as bold, as multifarious as this... Olympic visitors should lug this brick back home for a pungent souvenir of the original "maximum city" in all it grot and grandeur...
-- Boyd Tonkin * The Independent *
Table of Contents
- Contents
- Foreword by Roddy Lumsden
- Introduction by Mark Ford
- Mir Mahfuz Ali
- MIG-21 Raids at Shegontola
- Rachael Allen
- Science and Math
- Robert Anthony
- Clouds
- Simon Armitage
- Emergency
- Michael Bayley
- Estuary
- Fiona Benson
- Toboggan Run
- Emily Berry
- Picnic
- Liz Berry
- Scenes from The Passion – The First Path
- Rachael Boast
- The North Porch
- Alan Brownjohn
- Index of First Lines
- Colette Bryce
- Don’t speak to the Brits, just pretend they don’t exist
- John Burnside
- Choir
- Dominic Bury
- A Prism of Signs
- Anthony Caleshu
- from The Victor Poems
- Geraldine Clarkson
- The thing about Grace and Laura
- Sophie Collins
- Desk
- Joey Connolly
- Chekhov’s Gun
- Siân Melangell Dafydd
- Big Cats
- Joe Dresner
- a glass of ice cold milk
- Laura Elliott
- Skype Blinks
- Malene Engelund
- The Terns
- Richard Evans
- Space Invader
- Ruth Fainlight
- The Motorway
- Matthew Francis
- Silverfish, Moth
- Claudia Friedrich
- My Disseration No Plagiarisation!
- Matthew Gregory
- A Room at the Grand Hotel des Roches Noires, 1971
- David Harsent
- Fire: end-scenes and outtakes
- Lee Harwood
- The Oak Coffer
- Oli Hazzard
- from Within Habit
- Sarah Howe
- A loop of jade
- Caoilinn Hughes
- Bruisewort
- Kirsten Irving
- No Fish Are We Now
- Alan Jenkins
- Deptford
- Mimi Khalvati
- Bringing Down the Stars
- Hannah Lowe
- The Other Family
- Lydia MacPherson
- Lithium Lovesong
- Glyn Maxwell
- Modu and Mahu
- Chris McCabe
- The Duchess of Malfi
- Christopher Middleton
- Go With Isaac Rosenberg
- Andrew Motion
- The Mill
- André Naffis-Sahely
- Through the Rockies
- John North
- Summer Solstice, Cumbria
- Ruth Padel
- The Chain
- Abigail Parry
- Girl to Snake
- Christopher Riesco
- Caliban Life
- Carol Rumens
- Easter Snow
- Declan Ryan
- Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands
- Richard Scott
- Pilgrimage
- Ian Seed
- Prize-Giving
- Martha Sprackland
- ‘Dooms’
- Julian Stannard
- September 1939
- Jon Stone
- Endings to Adventure Gamebooks 22
- Todd Swift
- Red Shoes
- George Szirtes
- Sealed With a Kiss
- Rebecca Tamás
- A Trip With Werner Herzog
- Philip Terry
- Inferno: Canto I
- Helen Tookey
- Fosse Way
- Jack Underwood
- Thank you for your email
- Mark Waldron
- First off,
- Kate Wakeling
- Riddle
- Sarah Wardle
- Freeman
- Sarah Westcott
- Messenger
- Sam Willetts
- Caravaggio
- Hugo Williams
- from Notes from Dialysis
- John Hartley Williams
- I Inspect the Storm
- William Wootten
- The Harvest
