Century of Poetry Review
For a hundred years, "Poetry Review" has been at the heart of British literary life. Founded as "The Poetical Gazette" in May 1909, it has become the country's most widely read poetry magazine, playing a vital role in giving readers access to a generous diversity of contemporary poetry, and poets a space for the practice and appraisal of their art.
In this celebratory anthology, Fiona Sampson, the current editor of "Poetry Review" and herself an acclaimed poet, has selected a hundred of Poetry Review's finest moments, ranging from Rupert Brooke's "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", published in 1911, to a manuscript page of Harrison Birtwistle's "The Minotaur", published 2008. Here are Nobel Prizewinners and Poets Laureate, as well as long-forgotten delights recovered from back-issues. Contextualised by key critical essays and reviews, with Fiona Sampson's illuminating introduction, "A Century of Poetry Review" provides an indispensible map of twentieth-century poetry.
About the Author
Fiona Sampson has been published in more than thirty languages. She has twelve books in translation, and has received the Zlaten Prsten (Macedonia) and the Charles Angoff Award (US), and been shortlisted for the Evelyn Encelot Prize for European Women Poets. From 2005-2012 she was the "Editor of Poetry Review"; she is now Professor of Poetry at the University of Roehampton, where she is the Director of the Roehampton Poetry Centre and Editor of Poem. A Fellow and Council Member of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the English Association and Trustee of the Wordsworth Trust, her publications include twenty-four volumes of poetry, criticism and philosophy of language. She has received the Newdigate Prize, a Cholmondeley award, a Hawthornden fellowship, Kathleen Blundell and Oppenheimer-John Downes Awards from the Society of Authors, Writer's Awards from the Arts Councils of England and Wales and various Poetry Book Society commendations, and has been shortlisted twice for both the T. S. Eliot Prize and Forward prizes. Recent books include a new edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley for Faber (PBS Book-club Choice) and Coleshill (Chatto, PBS Recommendation). The US edition of her selected poems appeared from Sheep Meadow Press in 2013.
Reviews
Awards won by Fiona Sampson
Short-listed, 2010 Fiona Sampson shortlisted amongst 10 others for the T. S. Eliot poetry prize (Rough Music)
"It's always been the great distinction – and the great opportunity – of Poetry Review to be at once a beacon and a lighthouse: as interested in providing a centre for good writing, as it is in estabishing and representing a wide curiosity about the many forms that good writing might take. It's especially heartening to see the magazine in such excellent health in this, its centenary year" – Andrew Motion
