the website for innovative British poetry

Welcome to one of the few genuinely creative and uncommercial areas in British culture — innovative poetry. Largely ignored by mainstream media and literary culture, with little mention at the Poetry Society, sparse evidence on the shelves of Waterstones or in the arts sections of newspapers, but with its own publishing outlets and events, a forty-year history showing a number of influences and strands — and a lot of exciting and intriguing writing.

As this decade ends, innovative poetry is becoming more confident and more public. But it is still, almost uniquely in British culture, a thriving, lively art activity that is truly independent — not dominated by money and the market, or the Arts bureaucracy, nor regarding itself as a branch of light entertainment. Real art, pursued for its own sake, and following its own rules.

www.modernpoetry.org.uk introduces you to this world, online.
Use the links to access the material that interests you.
If you're completely new to this writing, try the Start Here page, and take it from there.

Start Here New Readers Start Here – an introduction to Innovative British Poetry Websites Useful for Understanding Avant-Garde British Poetry – with detailed comments and quotations Poetry And Me: A Writing Biography – a personal experience of this poetic culture The Post Avant-Garde: umm, what is this? – my take on what is meant by this phrase

Useful Lists Useful Lists for British Avant-Garde Poetry – websites, blogs and books Important Anthologies, Literary Histories & Critical Texts Links to British Avant-Garde Poetry Sites (annotated and detailed) Quick Links to British Avant-Garde Poetry Sites

What's Happening Readings in London Sundays at the Oto on MySpace You Must Write As If Your Life Depended On It — blog updating changes on www.modernpoetry.org.uk & Great Works

www.modernpoetry.org is an offshoot of Great Works website; "a site for innovative writing: modernist, postmodernist, archaic. It proclaims the need to let a thousand flowers bloom, and rejects any single definition of what writing is. It welcomes alternative poetries and other writing. It proudly offers no retrieval of coherence at a higher interpretative level." Both have been produced by Peter Philpott.

Try the new Search Engine, covering this site, and also Great Works, www.modernpoetry.org.uk and You Must Write As If Your Life Depended On It blog.