Nerve Damage, a different kind of ekphrastic anthology

"The Poet" by Joel-Peter Witkin

Rupert Loydell sent this image to numerous poets asking for their responses in poetry, and the booklet Nerve Damage collects the results, with contributions from Annabel Banks, Sarah Cave, M.A. Duxbury-Hibbert, A.C. Evans, Mike Ferguson, Peter Finch, John Gimlet, David H.W. Grubb, Alan Halsey, Daniel Y. Harris, H.L. Hix, Aaron Kent, John Mingay, Sheila E. Murphy, John Phillips, Ian Seed, Robert Sheppard, Martin Stannard, Paul Sutton, George Ttoouli, Loydell, and myself. It can be purchased by sending £5 cheque made to R.M. Loydell or a $10 bill for US orders to Stride, 4B Tremayne Close, Devoran, Cornwall TR3 6QE. I'm greatly looking forward to reading the other poems, to see the range of responses to the image. 

Poems sought for poetry anthology on human rights

The University of London’s Human Rights Consortium, in conjunction with the Keats House Poets and the Institute of English Studies, seeks submissions for a new anthology of poems about human rights. The deadline is 15 May, and further details are available here. Those writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month may want to devote a day to drafting an appropriate poem, then revise and submit it once the month's out.

Sea Pie: a Shearsman Anthology of Oystercatcher Poetry

I'm absolutely delighted to be in this lovely, surprisingly slim volume edited by Peter Hughes, editor of Oystercatcher Press. Those looking to further their acquaintance with quality experimental poetry should look no further (it's largely British). The anthology contains selections from Oystercatcher pamphlets. Contributors include Kelvin Corcoran, Emily Critchley, Ian Davidson, Amy Evans, Giles Goodland, Catherine Hales, John Hall, Michael Haslam, John James, Rachel Lehrman, Sophie Mayer, Alasdair Paterson, Rufo Quintavalle, Peter Riley, Sophie Robinson, Lisa Samuels, Maurice Scully, Nathan Thompson, Carol Watts, John Welch and more. I can hardly wait to begin reading it!

You can purchase the anthology directly from Shearsman Books. 

The Other Room Anthology 4

The splendid poetry reading series in Manchester, The Other Room, publishes an annual anthology of its readers. I read there in April last year in the good company of Ken Edwards, Alec Finlay and by video link Derek Henderson, and with the year of readers in the anthology, the company increases to include Tim Allen, Andrea Brady, Alan Halsey, Colin Herd, Karen Mac Cormack, Steve McCaffery, Geraldine Monk, and Philip Terry, among others. Visit this page at The Other Room's website to purchase your own copy. 


Thanks to series curators James Davies, Tom Jenks, and Scott Thurston both for the invitation to the original reading and the impressive anthology. 

A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens

As a former Victorianist, I'm delighted to have a poem in this new anthology, edited by Peter Robinson and published by Two Rivers Press. There's a wonderful array of poems here by the likes of Moniza Alvi, Alison Brackenbury, Fred D'Aguiar, Maura and Tim Dooley, Jane Draycott, Ian Duhig, Peter Finch, John Greening, Philip Gross, Alan Halsey, Alan Jenkins, Jamie McKendrick, Paul Muldoon, Richard Price, Justin Quinn, Deryn Rees-Jones, Peter Riley, Anthony Rudolf, Lesley Saunders, Elizabeth Smither, Julian Stannard, C.K. Stead, George Szirtes and others--how's that for range?

You can purchase a copy directly from the publisher here.

A short survey of writing habits

For the annual anthology, last year's Bath Spa University MA graduates decided to do a short survey of writing habits, beginning with writers teaching on the programme and extending outward into the larger literary community. Respondents include myself, Peter Finch, George Szirtes, Samantha Harvey, Mimi Thebo, Gerard Woodward, and Lucy English, among others. You can read them here, as well as dip into extracts from the graduates' work.

Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales

I've just begun reading from this well produced anthology edited by Nigel Jenkins, Ken Jones and Lynne Rees and published by Gomer, and I'm enjoying the range of haiku, senyru, and haibun. Here's a haiku by a friend of mine:

early dark

the cathedral visible

only as windows

Karen Hoy

The anthology is available for £9.99/$14.99 direct from the publisher.

April Fool's poetry anthology

In honour of the day, Rob A. Mackenzie has posted a sparky satirical piece on his blog, titled "New Poetry Anthology." It begins "Breaking News. The Government have announced that, as part of their ongoing commitment to literature and the arts, a new anthology called 'Undersize Sock Poems' has been produced"--and gets better and better as it continues.

A splendid new review of Infinite Difference

appears online in Horizon 5, written by Ruth Jenkins.

Infinite Difference on the TLS Books of the Year 2010

Jeremy Noel-Tod writes in Friday's issue, "In the year that Rae Armantrout won the Pultizer Prize in Poetry, it was good to see the thinking Briton's woman poet represented by Carrie Etter's rich and intelligent anthology, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets."

Hurrah!

Two more (last?) readings for Infinite Difference at Greenwich and UEA

There are two more readings from Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets forthcoming; I expect they'll be the last ones for some time.

On Friday, 17 December at 7 p.m., Sascha Akhtar, Emily Critchley, Frances Kruk, Rachel Lehrman, Sophie Mayer, Wendy Mulford, myself, and others to be confirmed will read at the University of Greenwich as part of their term-end student reading. Thus selected students will read in the first half, anthology contributors in the second. The reading is free. I'll post the exact location and an updated list of readers on the Infinite Difference page as soon as I have them.

On Tuesday, 22 February, at 7 p.m., Sascha Akhtar, Anne Blonstein, Rachel Lehrman, Wendy Mulford, Frances Presley, Anna Reckin, Lucy Sheerman, Harriet Tarlo, myself, and others to be confirmed will read in the Drama Studio at the University of East Anglia. The reading is free and open to the public.

Take down the dates! These will be great nights.

They just keep on coming--Steven Waling's rave review of Infinite Difference

"This is an important anthology of often dizzingly innovative writing, going from the relatively straightforward poetry of Claire Crowther to the stranger shores of Caroline Bergvall's more conceptual verse....[T]his is a brave attempt to represent poetries that are often excluded from the usual conversations about the art form....New approaches to landscape, to the personal lyric, to the political, abound in this challenging and fascinating anthology."

Steven Waling in the current issue of The North

"The Verge of a Language"--another appreciative review of Infinite Difference

In The Brooklyn Rail, Barry Schwabsky reviews Infinite Difference alongside the American anthology, Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque Poetics, edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg. In addition to appreciative reviews of both books, the essay also provides perceptive comments on the differences between American and British women's non-mainstream poetries.

A most appreciative review of Infinite Difference

has been written by Ian Seed and appears online in his magazine, Shadowtrain.

And another online review

of Infinite Difference! Rob McLennan calls it "magnificent".

Another review of Infinite Difference

Another complimentary review of Infinite Difference appears online at Eyewear, written by Steve Van-Hagen.

Stephen Burt reviews Infinite Difference on the London Review of Books blog

Read it here.

Women's Poetry Anthologies

I'm off to London shortly for tonight's event at The Poetry Library, "What Every Woman Would Carry: Women's Poetry Anthologies," moderated by Dr Jane Dowson, author of A Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century British Women's Poetry; my fellow panelist is Maura Dooley, editor of Making for Planet Alice: New Women's Poetry (Bloodaxe, 1997). Thoughts?

Dublin reading podcasts

My reading in June on the Wurm im Apfel series in Dublin is now available in two podcasts from iTunes (simply search for my name under the description--not author) or for streaming online on this page of the Wurm im Apfel site. I read selections by Claire Crowther, Frances Presley, Anna Reckin, and Lucy Sheerman from Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, as well as some of my own work from that anthology and from my pamphlet Yet (Leafe, 2008). Thanks to Kit Fryatt and Dylan Harris for the invitation and their generosity, and to Poetry Ireland for funding the event.

Vive la Différance!

The new Poetry London (Summer 2010) carries, as its final piece, Tim Dooley's full A4-page review of Infinite Difference with the splendid title "Vive la Différance". It has some quibbles about choice of poets/categorization (as with all anthology reviews), the academicism of some of the poetics statements (saw it coming), and the proportion of the parts of entries (strange as the poetics statements are up to one page, the entries up to eight, the biographies no more than 150 words), but the tone manifests interest in appreciation throughout.

On poetics statements Dooley speaks well of Claire Crowther and Marianne Morris; of poems he enthuses about Denise Riley, Elisabeth Bletsoe, and Morris (all the better for TLS's ignorant slighting of her). These are meant as a representative sample, the review suggests, not as the only occurrences.

If I've delayed in commenting on this review, it's in part because I've been drowning in year-end marking, in larger part because of the graciousness of the final sentence, which makes me feel all the hours were worthwhile but also makes me feel (abashed?). It may be one of the best things anyone's said about me. I dearly hope Dooley's right--I aspire to it.

"Carrie Etter has performed a service for the wider readership of poetry in bringing together these distinctive voices."