Colette Bryce, Poetry Editor Magic words

In his final issue of The Review, in 1972, Ian Hamilton invited an assortment of poets to consider the following questions:

1. What, in your view, have been the most (a) encouraging, (b) discouraging features of the poetry scene during the past decade?

2. What developments do you hope to see during the next decade?

Nearing the end of our first ten years of twenty-first century poetry, we could usefully ask ourselves the same questions. One of the respondents in ’72 was Philip Larkin, who cut to the chase with his usual clarity:

I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals. These, to the best of my admittedly sketchy knowledge, prompt the reflection that the most encouraging features of the last decade have been the good poems, and the most discouraging etc., the bad poems…

I have found myself in whole-hearted agreement with this, sitting at my desk each day reading through the hundreds of submissions for Poetry London.

‘Encouraging’, in the context of reading poems, is doubly apt. As a writer I have always taken, or perhaps been given, courage from good poems: the courage to create. It takes a certain bravery to dare to write, and a great deal more to dedicate one’s life to it. ‘Don’t be afraid of yourself’, Coleridge would advise – words perhaps as sustaining to him as to those he sought to inspire. Through reading, and excitement at what poetry can achieve, we may find our impetus to write and attempt to increase those possibilities. To its reader, in turn, a good poem can be ‘the magic words’, an incantation that unlocks the door to a new creative space.

This decade has been a vibrant and vital one in UK poetry. It has introduced us to a remarkable range of talented new arrivals and brought to maturity the work of poets who had so impressed us as the ‘New Generation’ and their peers in the decade before. The discouraging moments have been our losses: not of poems – which endure so long as there are readers – but of poets: Ursula Fanthorpe, Mick Imlah, Adrian Mitchell (our ‘Shadow Laureate’), Michael Donaghy, Dorothy Molloy, and Peter Redgrove, to name but a few.

Apart from all of the good poems that have been written, some of which have been published in this magazine, one of the most encouraging things to have happened is the appointment of Carol Ann Duffy to the role of Poet Laureate in May of this year. As we go to press, carrying a new poem by the laureate, we salute the admirable start she has made through her advocacy for the art, and through pioneering a new kind of public poetry that speaks clearly and honestly for our times. In Duffy, we have a vocational poet who has always been a positive force in the public arena: one who is a hundred per cent ‘for’ poetry and the conviction that poetry is ‘for’ all of us.

Regarding Hamilton’s second question, as to aspirations for the near future, what might we hope to see? Back then, Larkin concluded succinctly, ‘One hopes there will be more good [poems] and fewer bad’. As an editor, I would second that, from the other side of the millennial (indeed mortal) fence, and add that I’d hope for more of the ‘good ones’ to arrive at Poetry London.

Magic words to open doors in the mind? Do send.

The poems in this issue were edited by Colette Bryce; the reviews and features by Tim Dooley.