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Top Reads of 2015: Steven J. Fowler

 

jenks

Tom Jenks,  Spruce  (Blarts Books)

One of most overlooked poets in the UK, doing the work conceptualism should be doing, getting to the heart of uniquely British ennui through splicing methodology and jet black humour.

Sandeep Parmar,  Eidolon  (Shearsman Books)  

High modernism powerfully maintained and redeployed by one of the most interesting poets crossing the American / UK scene.

darkislands

Tom Chivers,  Dark Islands  (Test Centre)

One of the clearest voices in British poetry in his finest work to date, beautiful rendered, written and designed.

SoN

Emma Hammond,  The Story of No  (Penned in the Margins)

Powerful for it’s immediacy, incredibly sophisticated for it’s lack of pretension in the face of profoundly personal poetry. Amazing book.

architecture-of-chance

Christodoulos Makris,  The Architecture of Chance  (wurm press)  

This is the future of a poetry which reflects our world of language without dispensing with the expressionistic skill of interpreting that language. Found text lies with lyrical poetry, a thorough achievement to balance them to such effect.

Peter Jaeger, A Field Guide to Lost Things (If P Then Q press)

Clever, resonant and profound, as all of Peter Jaeger’s works are, a fine example of the possibilities of contextual, process-orientated thinking getting to the heart of contemporary poetry.

servantdroneBruno Neiva & Paul Hawkins,  Servant Drone  (Knives forks and spoons press)  

Brilliant collaborative poetry collection (of which there are far too few) taking on a necessary issue in necessarily disjunctive ways.

Michael Thomas Taren,  Eunuchs  (Ugly Duckling Presse)  

Best possible example of what is possible in contemporary American poetics of my generation. Excessive, authentic, ambitious.

beauty


Rebecca Perry,  Beauty/Beauty  (Bloodaxe Books)  

Reflective and observational in the most well conceived way, a clear poetic experience as a book, it accumulates and resonates as a collection.

Lee Harwood,  The Orchid Boat  (Enitharmon Press)  

The last work by one of the most interesting poets in the English language in the latter half of the 20th century, a typically beautiful book.

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