Andrew Marvel (1621 - 1678)
A metaphysical poet and political satirist, Andrew Marvel (who initially wrote his poems in Latin) managed to maintain divided
loyalties during the English Civil War and its aftermath, without getting divided up himself. Indeed, he successfully pleaded
for the life of his good friend John Milton, whose head Charles II merrily desired to cleave from his body.
|
| Click on picture to go to profile |
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
One
of the quintessential poetic voices (even in his novels) of the 20th century, Philip Larkin managed to combine an elegant
austerity with ironic wit, warmth and a sense of times passing, all delivered in a natural contemporary voice.
Enthusiastically promoted by Anthony Thwaite and Andrew Motion, he is also vilified for miserabilism, conservatism and (alleged)
misogyny. The eponymous Philip Larkin Society cherishes his flame.
|
| Click on picture to go to profile |
A contemporary Hull poet, Peter Knaggs is interested
in how the ordinary and extraordinary interweave. His poetry is about storytelling and characters. Informed by modern poetics
and culture, Cilla Black has as much to do with the outcome as Simic, O'Brien, Sweeney or Armitage. Pssssst! He is also
known as "Wilton Carhoot" and, as the editor of "The Slab" anthologies, is somewhere near the
centre of Hull's ever more credible claim to be acclaimed as "The Ciy of Poets".
|
| Cick on picture to go to profile |
Tony Flynn's work has appeared widely in leading magazines and anthologies and he has received a number
of literary awards and bursaries, including an Eric Gregory Award early in his career, and an Arts Council of England Writer’s
Award more recently. In 1994, he was the Arts Council of Wales Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Bangor, North
Wales. His poem, ‘Seeing Voices’ won First Prize in the English Association Fellows’ Poetry Prize Competition,
2007.
"He gives us a poetry that looks plain and factual
but where every word has been thoroughly weighed for appropriateness. It is poetry that is profoundly moving in its simplicity.
In this it aproaches someone like the great Hungarian poet Pilinzsky, also a Catholic. If anyone asked me 'What is poetry?'
Flynn's poetry is one place I might start my explanation."
|
| Click on picture to go to profile |
Ian Parks (born 1959)
Ian Parks produced his first poetry collection
in 1985, Gargoyles in Winter (Littlewood), and this received a Yorkshire Arts Award. He received a Hawthornden
Fellowship in 1991, a Travelling Fellowship to the USA in 1994 and was one of the National Poetry Society New Poets in 1996. His
poetry has received numerous accolades and awards, including the Royal Literary Fund 2003, the Oppenheim Award 2001 and 2002
and the John Masefield Award 2001. Ian is consultant editor for Dream Catcher, serves on the judging panel for
the TMA theatre awards and reviews contemporary poetry for Poetry Quarterly Review.
|
| Click on picture to go to profile |
T.F. Griffin is the most classical of recent Hull poets,
hiding forlorn poems beneath a heavy neo-Romantic varnish. He is certainly not the easiest modern poet to come to terms with,
but time invested in understanding his work eventually pays rich dividends.
Frank Redpath (1927-1990)
Frank Redpath was a committed low-profile poet who
is much regarded as both a quietly compelling poet and as a considerabe human being. Unfortunately, the only volume he published
in his lifetime - "To the Village" - is unattainable, and there are very few copies left
of his posthumous collection - "How It Turned Out".
Click here to access his profile.
|
| Click on picture to go to Waterstones.com |
"The Slab"
is a superb anthology of contemporary poetry,edited by Wilton Carhoot (Peter Knaggs).
Review:
If you,
like us, have not been paying much attention to the state of poetry recently, and rather assume that it is the sort of thing
written to keep Faber & Faber in business, somewhat lost between the Elysian Fields and a crow near Barnsley, this collection
will come as an immense surprise (and delight).
It mostly
gives a distinctive voice to Northern England, and is stuffed full of wholesome goodness, as you might expect, and much brilliance
too, from Fiona Curran’s twin racing track “The Penultimate Bet”, or Dan Fante’s wrecked lines and
his “meanest bastard starving cat”, to Gaia Holmes’ stunning “Possession”:
“My
shoulder blades crack
as he pushes them back
against the carpet.
He holds me down
until I stop twitching.
This
is true love.”
“Or
her “Claustrophobia”:
“On
the morning bus
I can smell a hundred lives
in the breath that crowds the air ….”
to Geoff
Hattersley’s “Boss Arse”, “Another Boss Arse” and “Stupid Stuff” (all about idiotically
aggressive management) and Peter Ardern’s “B1”:
“Like
a slow motion tower demolished
he plummeted out of view ….”
This
is a riot of enjoyment and shout-out-aloud pleasure – a magnificent education.
The Slab series continues on into The Slab 2, a worthy, indeed, exceptional sequel to the original tome.
The absolute highlight of this set is the series of
Geoff Hattersley-esque dispatches by Martin Hayes fresh from the frontline of the Phoenix Express motorcycle courier company,
where the management is shite and the rest are weird, just like you and me. These poems are short stories distilled to their
vignette essentials of human nature in its mundane rawness and coarseness – working day proverbs.
There are
also some fine poems about death and remembrance (often of parents), kicked off by Pete Morgan’s ‘In Tens’,
picked up by Chrissie Gittins in a series of four, relayed to Charlotte Gann’s ‘My Hands’, fed through to
Carol Coiffat for ‘Myth’, then to M.V. Williams’ ‘The Dry Lands’, before being slam-dunked (not
a word he uses regularly, I would guess) by T.F. Griffin in a devastating 1-2-3 move – ‘The Photograph’,
‘For Tony Earnshaw’ and ‘Kavita’.
Throughout, bizarre passersby are placed on display,
added to by David Swann in ‘Captain Lancashire v the Daleks’ and ‘A Sudden Outbreak Of Hatred In Morecambe’,
by Chrissie Gittins in ‘Sunday Morning’, by Lisa Barker in ‘Messiahs’, and by Brendan Cleary in an
evocative sporting series.
…. and you get some jokes from Alan Holdsworth
too.
One of the many pleasures of this collection is that
so many of the contributors are given space to give you a true flavour of their work, and it’s all worth the time to
investigate.
If you know of a better collection of modern poetry
than this, please let us know. Otherwise, grab this one. It is superb. (TR).
