www.modernpoetry.org.uk
the website for British Innovative Poetry
"Best UK poetry site I've yet seen" says Ron Silliman
now with Favourite Things — individual lists of best recent texts + wordcloud
Welcome to one of the few genuinely creative and uncommercialised 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 fortyfive-year history showing a number of influences and strands — and a lot of exciting and intriguing writing.
Innovative poetry has become more confidently outgoing and more public, with large-scale publishing, now nationally spread readings and performances, and established support in several universities. 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 not a hermetic cut off little arty world, but one relating to our lived experience through language, making new patterns and forms to encounter our changing lives.
www.modernpoetry.org.uk introduces you to this world, online. Use the links below to access the material that interests you. If you're completely new to this writing, try the New Readers Start Here page, and take it from there.
Note from Peter Philpott: I am on the final iteration of link-checking etc, and will follow this by going over the various lists, bits of information etc. I am uploading my revisions from now on an ad hoc basis, so take the site as being in a permanent beta state until this is complete. When it is, I plan to stop. If I don't stop before then.
