While the pandemic may have prevented poets from physically meeting together, poetry itself is in good health. this year, urgency and contemplation books have vied for attention, and striking new voices have emerged. chief among them was will harris, whose rendang (granta) won the front prize for first collection. Harris writes with piercing clarity and intelligence, his voice warm as he reflects sharply on big issues like our shared cultures and identities, as well as more intimate moments.
Rachel Long’s
my darling from the lions is another debut that has lit up the year, her wit and sensuality alive with winning energy. with similar enthusiasm, seán hewitt’s tongues of fire (cloak) weaves simple, economical depictions of the natural world with scenes of tenderness, intimacy, and ecstasy, with graceful balance. the first most important collection of 2020 is poor(penguin) by caleb femi. Combining startlingly inventive language with her own photography, the book is a groundbreaking tribute to the lives of the young black men she grew up with in South London. her devotion to celebrating a sense of now and what happens when it meets death gives the poor an unexpected spiritual dimension; it makes you think of george herbert in its intensity and importance.
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also intense is caroline bird the air year (carcanet) award-winning forward. her sixth collection is a centrifuge of energy at full speed, where riding the roller coaster of love is also an opportunity for self-knowledge and acceptance, “drops of miscellaneous optimism”. is one of the most generous and sincere books of the year. Another title that shapes the ineffable is jr carpenter this is a picture of wind (cartilla). is a digitally tinted pillow book full of staccato language inspired by john ruskin’s “bottled days of the sky”, francis beaufort’s wind scale, and luke howard’s observations of clouds: “matter invested with a luminous quality.. . breath became visible.”
natalie diaz’s meditations on stolen land, stolen water and erased bodies in postcolonial love poem (faber) are equally luminous: “i am your native, / and this is my american labyrinth”. his language is rich and epigrammatic, his physicality enhanced by his quiet cadences. mining in similar territory, how to wash a heart (canopy) by bhanu kapil keenly explores what it’s like to be permanently nervous when feeling like a guest permanent as an immigrant.
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The lyrical essay has proven vital in examining topics that are often difficult or ignored. In this sense, just us (allen lane) by claudia rankine stands out, the continuation of the award-winning citizen. Subtitled “an American conversation”, it is a question of how it would be possible for people to accommodate and make sense of our differences, in race, class and status. Rankine is as hard and unbreakable with herself as with her interlocutors. Artist Abi Palmer also uses a mix of memoir, imagery, and poetry in her debut, Sanitarium (written in the margins). An account of her from her stay at a rehab spa in Budapest brings to life the reality of her physical pain, communicating the texture of her viscerally and mercilessly.
“‘I’ve always thought of you as a home stop, huddled in your Yorkshire trench,'” David Bowie says back from the dead to Simon Armitage in Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems ( faber), a broad personal poetic topography drawn from his entire career. is a rough guide to the poet laureate and the people who shaped him and continue to inspire him. and if you miss traversing a city in search of adventure, find solace in paris: a poem (faber) by hope mirrlees. A forgotten feminist modernist poem, and precursor to TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, this is a journey of typographical and linguistic exuberance through the mourning cityscape of the French capital one day in 1919.
Finally, this year the last books of two of the most important poets written in English came out. los historians (carcanet) by eavan boland, who died in april, approaches stories that are often overlooked with characteristic musicality and intelligence: those of women. meanwhile, in the fire of joy (picador), clive james reaffirmed his belief that noise is the important thing when it comes to poetry, and the “fire of joy” it produces in those who listen to it and they declaim it. From Thomas Wyatt to Carol Ann Duffy, this farewell volume features 80 poems he learned and loved, each accompanied by an essay to persuade us of their brilliance. not that he could hide his. “I chose the right profession, poetry, and followed it to the end.”
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