"Inpress is a powerful force for good." Andrew Motion
As washout August gives way to a surprisingly sunny September, this week sees the publication of Understudies: New and Selected Poems by one of Ireland's finest and most popular poets, Anne-Marie Fyfe.
Understudies brings together new poems of optimism and isolation, of assumed and confused identities, with some of the poems from The Ghost Twin, Tickets from a Blank Window and Late Crossing that first brought readers into this world of lives at once chaotic and oddly consolatory.
Buy Understudies: New and Selected Poems.
Congratulations to Seren poet Carrie Etter who has won the 2010 London Festival Fringe Prize for the Best First Collection of Poetry for The Tethers.
At a packed prize-giving in the West End, Carrie Etter fought off strong competition to carry off the glory and a prize of £2,500. Judges Daljit Nagra, Tamar Yoseloff and Adam O'Riordan were full of praise for the language, conceits and formal qualities of her poetry.
Carrie will now appear at the Festival Awards ceremony on 26th August at the Waldorf Hilton, and will read with the judges at a special event at Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour on 1st November.
Buy The Tethers, or watch Carrie reading some of her poems.
Also available are two more Seren collections who narrowly missed out on this year's prize: Inroads by Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Berg by Hilary Menos.
As you're leafing through the papers this Saturday, keep your eyes peeled for not one but two tasters of the new collection from Carol Rumens, De Chirico's Threads, published by Seren.
On Saturday 14th August, The Guardian will feature 'De Chirico Paints Ariadne on Naxos' as its Poem of the Week. And not to be outdone, the FT will offer 'Hurbinek's Children' as its own favourite. Whichever you choose, they're both terrific poems from a terrific new collection by one of the outstanding poets in the UK.
You can also tune into 'Words and Music' on Radio 3 on Sunday 15th to hear the poem 'Beaujolais' from Cohabitation, the debut collection from 2010 Forward Prize nominee Kate Bingham.
Buy De Chirico's Threads or Cohabitation.
Hot off the Inpress this week is the latest issue of The London Magazine.
The new issue features the usual diverse range of poetry and short fiction, plus insights into the worlds of art, culture, even table manners. There are features on various European masters, the National Gallery's latest exhibition on British civilisation, along with an essay in memory of the magazine's legendary editor Alan Ross. Plenty to get your teeth into on these long summer days.
Buy The London Magazine August-September. Alternatively, you can get even more value for money by subscribing to the magazine for one or two years.
After the wild successes of its Staying Alive series over the past decade, Bloodaxe's new taste-making anthology Identity Parade showcases the next generation of poetic talent across Britain and Ireland.
Featured in Saturday's Guardian, Charles Bainbridge describes it as an "important and timely book... an exhilarating anthology, its tone one of magnanimous pluralism." And he goes on to say that "Not since Edward Lucie Smith's British Poetry Since 1945, published by Penguin in 1970, has one anthology embraced such a wide range of both experimental and formalist styles."
So if you're looking for a true reflection of our multi-cultured, multi-faceted age, then the line-up in Identity Parade is a perfect place to start.
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