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Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century | Book review

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

A new collection showcases young poets whose work soars above the tired editorial clichés

In 1962, Penguin published an anthology edited by Al Alvarez, bombastically entitled The New Poetry. Alvarez introduced his selection with a now-famous essay in which he expressed his belief that the postwar English literary scene had become insular and moribund, its poetry calcifying into the "academic-administrative verse, polite, knowledgable, efficient" typified by the Movement poets of the 1950s. His anthology, conceived to counter this process, championed younger poets whom he believed capable of "open[ing] poetry up to new areas of experience"; almost half a century on, his lineup, which included Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn and (in the 1966 reprint) Sylvia Plath, has stood the test of time.

No surprise, then, that James Byrne and Clare Pollard, editors of Bloodaxe's zeitgeist-chasing Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, cite Alvarez as inspiration. Their anthology, they tell us, is intended to showcase the work of poets who "address the particu

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