Autumn 2009

Editorial by Colette Bryce, Poetry Editor
In his final issue of The Review, in 1972, Ian Hamilton invited an assortment of poets to consider the following questions:

Poems

Carol Ann Duffy
Scheherazade

John Stammers
Sands

John Stammers
Dead Alsatian in a Vegetable Crate, That Sweet Before Emotion, The House Sale

Dora Malech
Fair Play, City Beach, Heaven

Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Asda, Ten Days Post-Partum

Julia Deakin
Attitude, Date

Simon Armitage
Beyond Huddersfield, Collaborators

Eoghan Walls
Heraclites Bathes at Kivu

Kit Fan
Night Temples

Tomaž Šalamun
Demolition

Siriol Troup
The Asset, Party Girl, Year of the Rabbit

Sam Willetts
Jewish Section, Holt Paupers’ Cemetery, New Orleans

Jo Shapcott
Shrubbery

Jo Shapcott
For Summer, Cedar of Lebanon, Cypress

Paul Batchelor
To a Halver

Nadia Al Fazil-Kareem
Yesterday I Crushed Green Cardamoms

G C Waldrep
Baptism of Signs, Still Life, with Drawing

Grevel Lindop
Pencil

Robin Robertson
Web, During Dinner

Elizabeth Smither
The Wedding Lawn

COMPETITION 2009
Don Paterson: Judge’s Report

Judy Brown: FIRST PRIZE
Letter to My Optician

Howard Wright: SECOND PRIZE
Moyle

Gerard Lee: THIRD PRIZE
Fodder

Matthew Caley: COMMENDED
Nag

Josh Ekroy: COMMENDED
At the end of the day

Nell Farrell: COMMENDED
Dead Mouse Poem

Julian Stannard: COMMENDED
The Blessing of the Octopus at Lerici

Reviews & Features

Old Incurables
Peter Robinson revisits Ian Hamilton’s views of how poetry might ‘make things better’

Ut Pictura Poesis
George Szirtes on Alice Oswald, Paul Muldoon and Jane Weir’s engagement with the visual arts

Reports of Recovery
Kate Bingham on single-themed collections by Josephine Balmer, Christopher Reid and Sarah Wardle

The Forgotten New
Roddy Lumsden on the fate of an earlier generation of poets

The Wires of Sadness
Frances Leviston finds whispers of mortality in the work of Fred D’Aguiar, Jane Draycott and Carrie Etter

A New Scene
Luke Kennard finds shared ground in debut poetry collections by Tamsin Kendrick, Sophie Mayer, Patrick Brandon, Lorraine Mariner and Tom Chivers

Between Light Card Covers
Julia Bird on some of this year’s best pamphlet collections

Poetry Belgrade
James Sutherland-Smith reports on contemporary Serbian poetry