Best British Poetry 2011, The Paperback – 15 Sept. 2011

Good

If this is the best of British Poetry in 2011 then god help us. The poems were mostly pretentious rubbish...and I read a lot of current poetry. The compiler of the anthology seems to have made his choices based on: if it makes no sense, is badly written, ungrammatical and (seemingly) written by 'poets' whose grasp of the English language is suspect then it's in. One of two poems pass muster, but only just.

Oh dear. I bought this with the 2012 edition, thinking I would get a decent cross-section of the most interesting of contemporary poetry. How wrong I was. It's more a puzzle book than a literary item. It's full of that sort of poetry which is annoyingly obscure (to say the least), self-deluding, pretentious, self-indulgent and drenched in literary masturbation. I wonder whether the poets who write this stuff think beforehand, "If it's not weird nobody will think I'm clever." Anyone who values the beauty and meaning of words will despair at this preposterous, posturing drivel. Don't buy.

If you, like me, know very little about modern poetry, then you (like me) will love this book. It's a beautiful snapshot into the very best of the freshest, newest poets; a delicious selection from a wide world of poets, giving you the confidence to know where to go next if you want to know more.One of the joys of anthologies is that you can just dive in whenever you have a spare moment, at whatever place happens to take your fancy. Using the "open-at-random" technique, I've found myself in downtown India, in muddy Norfolk fields, in dusty museums, in other people's kitchens and in other people's beds. The selection is wide and varied, from sparse and pared-down fragments to vast, dense narrative pieces. What they have in common, however, is quality. You'll quickly find your favourites (I'm deeply smitten with "The Retired Eunuch" and "Some Sayings about the Snake"), but none of them will disappoint you. Everything in this book is worth reading.It's also a very approachable book. Being an anthology, it doesn't demand your sustained and monogamous attention for hours and hours on end. You can put it down and then pick it up again. It fits neatly into spare odds and ends of time.Lastly, in these times of austerity, I think it's also worth pointing out how generous a selection your money buys you here. For less than £10, you can sample the work of seventy different poets. So go on! Do it! Dive in!

Each poem within this stunning jewel of a book is accompanied by a note from the poet, giving a little detail of their lives and an explanation of why they wrote this particular poem, providing us, the reader, with added insight into the writing of each piece. This adds a wonderful dialogue to the collection wherein your own interpretation of a poem can be compared with the original writers ideas. In the introduction Roddy Lumsden states that " the end result is, I hope, a snapshot of what is happening at present in non-book publication of poetry in the UK" and if this is the case it chimes with what another poet (Nuala Ní Chonchúir) recently said to me, that being " poetry is in a healthy state in the sense that it is being written and published, and there are a lot of readings taking place. The small presses keep poetry alive", to which we owe a hearty thanks.[...]

Brilliant cross section of what is happening in British poetry at the moment. Great to dip in and out of - loving every scrap! Enjoyable, thought-provoking and above all, inspiring. Great to see poetry is flourishing, especially with such diversity and passion! Well done Salt Publishing for leading the way and believing in poets and their art!

I've been buying the long-running series Best American Poetry (BAP) since it started, so I was very interested to see how BBP compares. I was struck by the resemblances in book design to the American series. But what about the contents? Well, I've found some of the American yearbooks indigestible, and one year nearly unreadable! (Each volume has a different guest editor, and thus reflects their tastes). I read BBP straight through though, and with increasing admiration for the skills of its editor, Roddy Lumsden. Naturally, I didn't like all of Roddy's choices - every reader is different - but I found some wonderful poems by authors new to me, as well as some excellent poems by authors I've read previously.The selection is from British magazines and web publications, and Roddy has included a wide variety of sources for his choices.I recommend this book very strongly.

This book is a great overview of the cutting edge of poetry in the UK today, but more importantly, it's a well-sequenced and enjoyable collection of poems in its own right, diverse but still coherent. Highlights for me included Jon Stone's 'Mustard' and Lizzi Thistlethwayte's 'Scart Gap'.