We are looking for poetry that dares outside current trends, even against the grain; collections that aren't bus-queues, from poets who are forging their own linguistic connections with the root-ball of experience.

 

 

 

1        Poetry that dares…..

Flarestack Poets 2009 pamphlet competition received 220 entries. Both judges read all of them independently - a double scrutiny, in order to select individual poems as well as collections. We  were  stunned by the quality of submissions, and found it a hard task to shortlist collections and choose anthology poems from so much excellent writing.

 

We encountered a diverse range of poetry, from language-driven formal experiment, through to the exploitation of fairly conventional naturalistic strategies. We may have come to this with our own preconceived notions of the kind of poetry we would like to publish but in the process of reading the entries both realised that any stylistic approach, from the seemingly avant-garde through to the main-stream, can be used with passion and conviction; but equally, can become a default mode. In the end, as the range of writing in the anthology reflects, we responded to quality, skill, originality and invention in any form in which it presented itself and concerning any subject. The two winning pamphlets could be seen to embody polar opposites in terms of style, content, form and tradition, but they share the daring of absolute commitment to writing itself. The poetry we value most highly is that which we want to go back to again and again, which gains with re-reading and is both energising and complex.

 

 

2        Collections that aren't bus queues

 

We became aware of many of the ways poems can relate and be sequenced within a pamphlet-length collection.

 

Advice on Wearing Animal Prints stands out because Selima Hill makes the pamphlet an art form in itself, an A to Z of random acts of neglect like a comic strip from a theatre of cruelty, managing at the same time to be transcendently funny.

 

Poems in Cliff Forshaw's Wake thrive on energy and mastery of form, steeped in a scholarly awareness of the history of English poetry. The voice here is distinctive and mercurial - cool, intelligent yet engaged - the spirit of Larkin, perhaps, re-emerging, muscular and revitalised, in the 21st century.

 

Other shortlisted pamphlets offered different kinds of connectedness, among them a verse novella and a series of surreal whodunits; or they were remarkable for linguistic intricacy and playfulness; typographical inventiveness; or warmth, humanity and authenticity.

 

Pamphlets were less successful where there was no discernible relationship or play between poems to the extent that on occasion poems deadened each other; where poets seemed determined to include their most successful or best-beloved poems, at the expense of the collection as a whole; or where a theme became constricting to the extent of denying poems the space to sing.

  

 

3        …from poets who are forging their own linguistic connections with the root-ball of experience.

 

We read an overwhelming number of impeccable, well-made poems. The best of them dealt with even the most familiar themes with linguistic inventiveness and a sure awareness of the technical complexity of poetry, even where form was open and free. However, we felt that some took shortcuts with experience itself, over-relying on standard emotions in standard situations, to the extent of becoming clichéd. Experience seemed sometimes to be second-hand, particularly when taking a journalistic approach, for example to world events in which the poet did not appear to be involved. Writing about places was often extremely effective, but was less successful where poets contented themselves with trying to re-create the exotic through superficial details.  Memories of childhood and family history often provided valuable material but there was sometimes a tendency to lose the poetry in the anecdotes. Writing in response to visual art and music sometimes degenerated into reference rather than creating an independent work of art.

 

However, there were so many outstanding poems among the 6000+ that we read that it was an extremely onerous task to select for the anthology. Out of the many excellent poems we considered those we have included reflect the spirit of Flarestack Poets as expressed in the statement with which we launched the competition.