The best recent poetry, review roundup
Article excerpt
A roundup of six recent poetry collections showcases diverse voices and perspectives: Anthony Joseph's Haunting the Black Air, Leontia Flynn's Selected Poems, Rachel Long's Sparrow on the Rooftop, an anthology of new Palestinian poetry edited by Jorie Graham, Jennifer Lee Tsai's Melete, and a collection titled Somebody Should Have Pressed Record. The pieces span various themes and geographies, from intimate personal reflection to political and social commentary, reflecting the breadth of contemporary poetry.
Haunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph; Selected Poems by Leontia Flynn; Sparrow on the Rooftop by Rachel Long; You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine, edited by Jorie Graham; Melete by Jennifer Lee Tsai; Somebody Should Have Pressed Record by Galia Admoni
Haunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph (Bloomsbury, £12.99)
Joseph’s follow-up to the TS Eliot prize-winning Sonnets for Albert sees his poetic approach become more radical. He pays homage to avant garde writers such as Will Alexander and Nathaniel Mackey, while exploring “Nostalgia, mostly grief, / a haunting sound, / the frequency of some / magnetic feeling.” That makes for challenging syntax on first reading the poems. Persist, and Joseph’s unabashed lyricism shines through, finding beauty on dancefloors, city streets and in Trinidadian landscapes: “the way music fills the room, how we embrace until / we become flare bright, light as the white refraction / of the sun upon the summit of hills.”
Selected Poems by Leontia Flynn (Carcanet, £14.99)
She was a Next Generation poet and Forward prize winner; it’s a shock to remember that Flynn has been publishing for more than 20 years, so fresh do her poems remain. This assembly is a glorious reintroduction to her mordant wit, imaginative image-making and unerring ability to puncture pretension. Letter to Friends from 2011 is a brilliant, Auden-esque dissection of the early 21st century, worth a library of political analyses: “daily threats brought to our Way of Life / by man-made imminent apocalypse / though neither really outweighs private grief”. There are pleasures on every page.
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