Best British Poetry 2014

Mark Ford was born in 1962 in Nairobi, Kenya. He has published three collections of poetry, Landlocked (1991), Soft Sift (2001), and Six Children (2011). He has also published a biography of the French writer Raymond Roussel. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, and a selection of his reviews and essays have been published in two volumes, A Driftwood Altar (2005) and Mr and Mrs Stevens and Other Essays (2011). He is currently editing an anthology of the poetry of London for Harvard University Press.Roddy Lumsden (born 1966) is a Scottish poet, who was born in St Andrews. He has published five collections of poetry, a number of chapbooks and a collection of trivia, as well as editing a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade. He lives in London where he teaches for The Poetry School. He died in January 2020.Emily Berry’s debut poetry collection Dear Boy (Faber & Faber, 2013) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Hawthornden Prize. She is a contributor to The Breakfast Bible (Bloomsbury, 2013), a compendium of breakfasts. She is currently working towards a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia.John Burnside was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Light Trap (2001) was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.Anthony Caleshu is the author of two books of poetry and a novella His poems and stories have appeared widely in journals and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Dublin Review, American Literary Review, and Agni Online. He is the editor of the literary journal Short FICTION and teaches at the University of Plymouth in South West England.Siân Melangell Dafydd is the author of Y Trydydd Peth (The Third Thing), which won the 2009 National Eisteddfod Literature Medal. She is the co-editor of the literature review Taliesin and www.yneuadd.com and writes in both Welsh and English.Matthew Francis is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is a poet and novelist whose most recent collection is Dragons (Faber, 2001). His work has won the TLS / Blackwell’s Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize (twice) and the Welsh Book of the Year Award. He is the editor of W.S. Graham’s New Collected Poems (Faber, 2004).Kirsten Irving was born in Lincolnshire and lives and works in London. Her debut pamphlet, What To Do, was published by Happenstance, and her first collection, Never Never Never Come Back, was published by Salt. In 2017, she published an online serial, Love Carcass, detailing an erotic affair with a beast. She won the 2011 and 2017 Live Canon International Poetry Prizes, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and commended for the Forward Prize. Her poetry has been widely anthologised, translated into Russian and Spanish, and thrown out of a helicopter. www.kirstenirving.com @KoftheTriffidsLydia Macpherson grew up in the sixties in a small village on top of the Yorkshire Pennines. She now lives in very flat East Anglia. Lydia has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway University of London. She has been placed in several competitions, including the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize. Her poems range from the 'domestic gone awry' to the homeliness of the International Space Station.Chris McCabe was born in Liverpool in 1977. His poetry collections are The Hutton Inquiry and Zeppelins. He has recorded a CD with The Poetry Archive and written a play Shad Thames, Broken Wharf, which was performed at the London Word Festival and subsequently published by Penned in the Margins in 2010. He works as a Librarian at The Poetry Library, London, and teaches for The Poetry School.Ruth Padel is a prize-winning poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, formerly Chair of the Poetry Society and currently Resident Poet at Christ’s College, Cambridge. She has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Darwin: A Life in Poems. Her non-fiction includes a nature/travel book on wild tigers, much acclaimed for its description of Asian forest landscapes from Bhutan to Sumatra. The first section of The Poem and the Journey, her most recent book on reading contemporary poetry, turns on the landscape in which we find our first identity, and is prefaced by Viola’s question in Twelfth Night, ‘What country, friends, is this?’ Website: www.ruthpadel.com.Julian Stannard has published nine collections of poetry; the most recent being Please Don't Bomb the Ghost of My Brother (Salt, 2023). His work has been nominated for Forward (UK) and Pushcart Prizes (USA). He has been awarded the International Troubadour Prize for Poetry and the Lerici Anglo-Italian Prize for Poetry. The American publisher Sagging Meniscus Press are bringing out a novel by Stannard in late 2024.Jon Stone was born in Derby and lives in London. His work has been performed on radio and published in national newspapers, as well as in poetry anthologies themed around imitation, formal innovation, science fiction, mythology and the erotic. He won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2012 and the Poetry London Prize in 2014 and 2016. He edits compendiums of visual, ecological and experimental poetry through Sidekick Books, which he co-runs with Kirsten Irving.Todd Swift was born on Good Friday, 1966, in Montreal, Canada. He is a poet, editor, screenwriter and cultural activist. He has co- edited several anthologies, including Map-Makers’ Colours: New Poets of Northern Ireland (1988) and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (2002). His own collections of poetry include Budavox: Poems 1990–1999 and Cafe Alibi (2002). His essays and poems have appeared widely in journals such as Poetry Wales, Leviathan Quarterly, The Literary Review of Canada and The Dubliner. He has written over 60 hours of TV, for such companies as HBO, Paramount and Hanna- Barbera. He has also released a CD, with musician Tom Walsh, on the Wired On Words label. From 1997–2001 he was a Visiting Lecturer at Budapest University (ELTE). He is contributing editor for Matrix Magazine and poetry editor of www.nthposition.com. He now lives in Paris.George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Ottó Orbán, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and Ágnes Nemes Nagy. He co-edited Bloodaxe’s Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. His Bloodaxe poetry books are The Budapest File (2000); An English Apocalypse (2001); Reel (2004), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; New & Collected Poems (2008) and The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009. Bloodaxe has also published John Sears’ critical study Reading George Szirtes (2008). Szirtes lives in Norfolk and teaches at the University of East Anglia.Rebecca Tamás was born in London in 1988. She studied at the University of Warwick and at the University of Edinburgh, where she won the Grierson Verse Prize. Her poems have been published in a variety of magazines and journals including Magma, Oxford Poetry and The SHOp. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at The University of East Anglia. This is her first book of poems.Jack Underwood was born in Norwich in 1984. He graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in 2005 and is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, where he also teaches English Literature and Creative Writing. He is a librettist, musician and co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and was named a Faber New Poet in 2009. His debut pamphlet was published by Faber in October 2009 and his poems also feature in Voice Recognition from Bloodaxe. He reviews for Ambit and Poetry London. He lives in Hackney.Mark Waldron’s first book, The Brand New Dark was published by Salt Publishing in 2008. His work appears in Identity Parade, New British and Irish Poets published by Bloodaxe in 2010. He lives in east London with his wife and son.John Hartley Williams grew up in London. He worked as a teacher in France, the former Jugoslavija, and West Africa, and has made his home in Berlin since 1976. Williams has published many collections of poetry. A retrospective volume, The Ship, was published by Salt in 2007. A novel, Death Comes For The Poets, co-written with Matthew Sweeney, will appear from the Muswell Press in 2012 as will a new collection of poems Assault On The Clouds from Shoestring.

Mark 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.

• ContentsForeword by Roddy LumsdenIntroduction by Mark FordMir Mahfuz AliMIG-21 Raids at ShegontolaRachael AllenScience and MathRobert AnthonyCloudsSimon ArmitageEmergencyMichael BayleyEstuaryFiona BensonToboggan RunEmily BerryPicnicLiz BerryScenes from The Passion – The First PathRachael BoastThe North PorchAlan BrownjohnIndex of First LinesColette BryceDon’t speak to the Brits, just pretend they don’t existJohn BurnsideChoirDominic BuryA Prism of SignsAnthony Caleshufrom The Victor PoemsGeraldine ClarksonThe thing about Grace and LauraSophie CollinsDeskJoey ConnollyChekhov’s GunSiân Melangell DafyddBig CatsJoe Dresnera glass of ice cold milkLaura ElliottSkype BlinksMalene EngelundThe TernsRichard EvansSpace InvaderRuth FainlightThe MotorwayMatthew FrancisSilverfish, MothClaudia FriedrichMy Disseration No Plagiarisation!Matthew GregoryA Room at the Grand Hotel des Roches Noires, 1971David HarsentFire: end-scenes and outtakesLee HarwoodThe Oak CofferOli Hazzardfrom Within HabitSarah HoweA loop of jadeCaoilinn HughesBruisewortKirsten IrvingNo Fish Are We NowAlan JenkinsDeptfordMimi KhalvatiBringing Down the StarsHannah LoweThe Other FamilyLydia MacPhersonLithium LovesongGlyn MaxwellModu and MahuChris McCabeThe Duchess of MalfiChristopher MiddletonGo With Isaac RosenbergAndrew MotionThe MillAndré Naffis-SahelyThrough the RockiesJohn NorthSummer Solstice, CumbriaRuth PadelThe ChainAbigail ParryGirl to SnakeChristopher RiescoCaliban LifeCarol RumensEaster SnowDeclan RyanEthiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her HandsRichard ScottPilgrimageIan SeedPrize-GivingMartha Sprackland‘Dooms’Julian StannardSeptember 1939Jon StoneEndings to Adventure Gamebooks 22Todd SwiftRed ShoesGeorge SzirtesSealed With a KissRebecca TamásA Trip With Werner HerzogPhilip TerryInferno: Canto IHelen TookeyFosse WayJack UnderwoodThank you for your emailMark WaldronFirst off,Kate WakelingRiddleSarah WardleFreemanSarah WestcottMessengerSam WillettsCaravaggioHugo Williamsfrom Notes from DialysisJohn Hartley WilliamsI Inspect the StormWilliam WoottenThe Harvest