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Beyond the Lyric: A Map of Contemporary British Poetry
British poetry is enjoying a period of exceptional richness and variety. This is exciting but it's also confusing, and throws up the need for an enthusiastic guide that can explain and celebrate the many parallel poetry projects now underway.
Beyond the Lyric does just that. This is a book of enthusiasms: an intelligent and witty map of contemporary British poetry and a radical, accessible guide to living British poets, grouped for the first time according to the kind of poetry they write.
In a series of groundbreaking new classifications, beginning with the bread-and-butter diction of the Plain Dealers and ending on the capacious generosity of the Exploded Lyric, it examines the broad range of contemporary tendencies – from the baroque swagger of the Dandies to the restrained elegance of the Oxford Elegists; from the layered, haunting verse of Mythopoesis to the inventive explorations of the New Formalists. By probing the cultural context from which these groups emerge and shifting the critical focus back to the work itself, Sampson’s astute analysis illuminates and demystifies each of these terms and asks the big questions about what makes a poem.
The result is a celebration of poetry as a connected, responsive and above all communitarian form. Lively, engaging and inviting, this is the indispensible and authoritative guide for anyone who's ever wondered what's going on in British poetry today.
Beyond the Lyric does just that. This is a book of enthusiasms: an intelligent and witty map of contemporary British poetry and a radical, accessible guide to living British poets, grouped for the first time according to the kind of poetry they write.
In a series of groundbreaking new classifications, beginning with the bread-and-butter diction of the Plain Dealers and ending on the capacious generosity of the Exploded Lyric, it examines the broad range of contemporary tendencies – from the baroque swagger of the Dandies to the restrained elegance of the Oxford Elegists; from the layered, haunting verse of Mythopoesis to the inventive explorations of the New Formalists. By probing the cultural context from which these groups emerge and shifting the critical focus back to the work itself, Sampson’s astute analysis illuminates and demystifies each of these terms and asks the big questions about what makes a poem.
The result is a celebration of poetry as a connected, responsive and above all communitarian form. Lively, engaging and inviting, this is the indispensible and authoritative guide for anyone who's ever wondered what's going on in British poetry today.
- GenresPoetry
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 2012
About the author
Fiona Sampson
65 books80 followersFiona Ruth Sampson, MBE is an English poet and writer. She is published in thirty-seven languages and has received a number of national and international awards for her writing.
Sampson was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, and following a brief career as a concert violinist, studied at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate Prize. She gained a PhD in the philosophy of language from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She advises internationally on creative writing in healthcare, a field whose development she pioneered in a number of projects and publications. As a young poet she was the founder-director of Poetryfest – the Aberystwyth International Poetry Festival and the founding editor of Orient Express, a journal of contemporary writing from Europe. She has received a number of international writers' fellowships: I.A. Literary Association, Skojcan, Slovenia, 2015, Greek Writers’ Union Writers’ and Translators’ House, Paros, 2011, Estonian Writers’ Union House, Kasmu, 2009, Heinrich Boll House, Achill Island, 2005, Fundacion Valparaiso, Spain, 2002, Hawthornden Castle, 2001, Fondacion da Casa de Mateus, Portugal, 2001. She held an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship at Oxford Brookes University 2002-5, a CAPITAL Fellowship in Creativity at the University of Warwick 2007-8 and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Musical Research & Institute of English Studies: 2012-15.
From 2005-12, Sampson was the editor of Poetry Review, the oldest and most widely read poetry journal in the UK. She was the first woman editor of the journal since Muriel Spark (1947–49). In January 2013 she founded Poem, a quarterly international review, published by the University of Roehampton, where Sampson is Professor of Poetry and the Director of Roehampton Poetry Centre.
She lives in Herefordshire.
Sampson was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, and following a brief career as a concert violinist, studied at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate Prize. She gained a PhD in the philosophy of language from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She advises internationally on creative writing in healthcare, a field whose development she pioneered in a number of projects and publications. As a young poet she was the founder-director of Poetryfest – the Aberystwyth International Poetry Festival and the founding editor of Orient Express, a journal of contemporary writing from Europe. She has received a number of international writers' fellowships: I.A. Literary Association, Skojcan, Slovenia, 2015, Greek Writers’ Union Writers’ and Translators’ House, Paros, 2011, Estonian Writers’ Union House, Kasmu, 2009, Heinrich Boll House, Achill Island, 2005, Fundacion Valparaiso, Spain, 2002, Hawthornden Castle, 2001, Fondacion da Casa de Mateus, Portugal, 2001. She held an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship at Oxford Brookes University 2002-5, a CAPITAL Fellowship in Creativity at the University of Warwick 2007-8 and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Musical Research & Institute of English Studies: 2012-15.
From 2005-12, Sampson was the editor of Poetry Review, the oldest and most widely read poetry journal in the UK. She was the first woman editor of the journal since Muriel Spark (1947–49). In January 2013 she founded Poem, a quarterly international review, published by the University of Roehampton, where Sampson is Professor of Poetry and the Director of Roehampton Poetry Centre.
She lives in Herefordshire.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
November 26, 2014
The book introduces the current state of British and Irish poetry, cramming something like 170 poets into less than twice that many pages.
It has at least two peculiarities. The first is a psuedo-taxonomic 'Linnaean' approach, which assigns writers to idiosyncratic categories like e.g. 'Oxford elegists', 'Modernism' or 'the New Formalism'. Many of these are coherent, descriptively rewarding classifications, but some (most especially for me 'surrealism' as the background for some women's poetry) acquire little traction as rubrics. The second feature is a disinclination to consider a handful of writers as more important or better than their peers, or to see them exercising a significant influence on others' poets output. Muldoon and Geoffrey Hill especially suffer from this feature.
Sampson is hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic. She tends not to read whole poems, but to jump off from sections to other representative passages, sometimes decades away in composition, of a poet's work. The book is impossible to dislike (a virtue) but also slippery or hard to quarrel with (more of a fault).
It has at least two peculiarities. The first is a psuedo-taxonomic 'Linnaean' approach, which assigns writers to idiosyncratic categories like e.g. 'Oxford elegists', 'Modernism' or 'the New Formalism'. Many of these are coherent, descriptively rewarding classifications, but some (most especially for me 'surrealism' as the background for some women's poetry) acquire little traction as rubrics. The second feature is a disinclination to consider a handful of writers as more important or better than their peers, or to see them exercising a significant influence on others' poets output. Muldoon and Geoffrey Hill especially suffer from this feature.
Sampson is hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic. She tends not to read whole poems, but to jump off from sections to other representative passages, sometimes decades away in composition, of a poet's work. The book is impossible to dislike (a virtue) but also slippery or hard to quarrel with (more of a fault).
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review