The Poetry Business Sweep the Board in The Poetry School’s Books of the Year

The Poetry Business, Peepal Tree Press, Penned in the Margins, and The Emma Press were all recognised in the list of 26 books chosen by the Poetry School staff who said, "Although not, by popular consensus, a brilliant year generally, 2016 has been a good year for poetry: sales of poetry books topped £10m for the first time, a poet – Warsan Shire – featured on Beyonce’s latest album, Penguin reopened its poetry list, and, for the second year in a row, the Forward Prizes were cleaned up by women. The BBC even gave over a whole Saturday evening to poetry with Railway Nation: A Journey in Verse."
 
"Trend-wise, it’s been all about long poems and small publishers, difficult, avant-garde collections that open up with patient reading, and lyrical, political calls to action. Indeed, it seems the very terribleness of this year’s events has been the catalyst for poetry’s resurgence, with poems like Maggie Smith’s Good Bones and Ross Gay’s A Small Needful Fact capturing the grieving but defiant mood of the year best."

The list in full can be found here, but as far as we're concerned these are the real winners:

Sunshine by Melissa Lee-Houghton (Penned in the Margins)
Wife by Tiphanie Yanique (Peepal Tree)
CAIN by Luke Kennard (Penned in the Margins, reprinting)
Spitting Distance by Mark Pajak (The Poetry Business)
Dora Incites The Sea-Scribber to Lament by Geraldine Clarkson (The Poetry Business)
Complicity by Tom Sastry (The Poetry Business)
There Was And How Much There Was by Zeina Hashem Beck (The Poetry Business)
Trouble by Alison Winch (Emma Press)

You can buy all four Poetry Business pamplets here.