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Or: An Introduction to Contemporary Innovative British Poetry – with a note on naming

Poetry has a poor public presence in contemporary Britain, even though it plays a role in many people's lives. Where it does play a role, it is often as therapy or entertainment, or comfortable nostalgia. There is, though, a range of poetries in contemporary Britain which encounters the complicated state of our lives and consciousnesses in the third millenium (as you expect art or theatre or cinema or music to). This poetry is largely ignored by the dominant cultural progagandists and pedlars. It can be labelled avant-garde – or innovative, or linguistically innovative, or post avant-garde, or language-centred, or reflexive, or postmodernist, or even plain old modernist or late modernist poetry. There isn't a handy identifier (a part of the problem maybe!). These terms all refer to slightly different concepts, but with a lot of common factors, in terms of practices and social/cultural networks. This poetry is a major cultural activity that remains not yet picked up by fashion, finance or administrators — still at least in touch with genuine avant-garde impulses, though now with some academic bases.

This poetic culture is a broad tradition that has existed since the 1960s. The impetus of 1950s and 1960s American poetry was what largely set it in motion (though with ancestors identified, to some extent after the event, in some British poets of the 1930s-1950s). In Britain only a restricted "mainstream" poetry published by the larger commercial and heavily subsidised presses is given the bulk of what little publicity and distribution there is for poetry. The British Innovative Poets would regard this mainstream as largely unsatisfactory or inadequate for a poetry written at this time.

If you are from outside Britain, you would be astonished at the anti-modernist and anti-innovative bias within the dominant British literary culture. To phrase it aggresssively, the cults of deliberately narrow-minded provincial pettiness (Philip Larkin), felt-in-the-bones organicism and nature-worship (Ted Hughes) and populist triviality and accessibility (so many! – say Simon Armitage) have all imbedded themselves deep within the dominant British poetic tradition in the period since 1950. In many ways this has now become a bizarre situation given the way the visual arts establishment has increasingly opened itself completely to the post-conceptual movement labelled BritArt or the YBAs, and the genuine popular success of contemporary art institutions like Tate Modern.

This poetic culture began in the Sixties, with primarily American influences from Fifties and Sixties US poetry — initially the Beats, and the Black Mountain and New York Schools. This was a reaction to the vast limitations of the suddenly dominant poetry of the British Fifties, "The Movement", which embraced and exalted all the most conformist, xenophobic and anti-intellectual strains that infect the English soul. British innovative Poetry has maintained itself in a position of opposition to the now sterile mainstream of British literary culture since then. It will be interesting to see if its nature is changed by its recent success in establishing some toe-holds in universities and colleges.

What are the typical features of this poetry?

• a focus on or acute awareness of poetry as concerned with the process of perception/consciousness/putting into language, rather than on what is perceived or experienced – hence phrases like language-centred or reflective, and hence too accusations of "difficulty" or "elitism"


• various forms of estrangement effect to enable focus on language and process, and enforce awareness of the language of the poem itself, eg montage, use of found language, or of vocabulary chosen from a specific (non-poetic) discourse, use of complex syntax that fails to resolve itself – modernism


• a sense of self or voice which is fractured, decentred or otherwise not engaged in the old cons of authenticity – postmodernism


• formal creativity and experimentation rather than following traditional forms and patterns – hence linguistically innovative, or avant-garde


• there may be aspects of following set procedures in the formal composition of the writing – paralleling art practice since the 1960s


• there may be aspects of performance/improvisation in both the writing and the delivery of the texts, springing from:


• links between avant-garde poetry throughout the period since the late 60s and improvised music;
• an inheritance in performing (any!) textual material, coming from the neo-dada roots of the London-based avant-garde ("sound poetry");
• the establishment more recently of the academic study of performance writing (eg at Dartington).
• But note there is a separate entertainment-based Performance Poetry world of poetry slams, open mikes and stand-up routines, which has little overlap with linguistically innovative poetry


• dissemination through small scale institutions, establishing their own traditions, genealogies and alliances. You will find these listed on Great Works' Links page, or on Websites Useful for Understanding Avant-Garde British Poetry. Typically:


• publication (largely) by specific small presses, often using print-on-demand digital technology, or specialising in high level book design, or on the other hand maintaining a punkish lo-tech aesthetic;
• also a number of websites and blogs, some associated with publishers or reading series, many with individual poets;
• the importance of readings, as a means of getting the poetry out, and as part of poetry's performative nature, and for social interaction — establishing a scene;
• including a number of festivals or conferences;
• and support now within a small but not insubstantial number of University Departments (including creative writing programmes) – making it with this incipient institutionalisation a post avant-garde.

Probably no texts demonstrate all these factors, but they are widespread across most of the British poetry published on Great Works. Check this out for yourself!

A final note on naming. I follow present-day usage in referring to British poetry. The situation in Scotland is, though, very different, with less of this historic mainstream/avant-garde split. Ireland has complexities and cross-currents of its own, with some Irish poets, especially those from Ulster/Northern Ireland often taken effectively as part of the British mainstream. There is, though, a parallel Irish avant-garde, which has some connections with the British avant-garde. Some material on or linked to this site relates to this writing. (See Keith Tuma, Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry [Oxford UP NY, 2001] for coverage of the whole field.) As for Welsh poetry: I can say nothing of what is written in Welsh; but for contemporary Anglo-Welsh poetry (ie written in English in Wales), you need the magazine Poetry Wales.

The actual name for the poetry itself is also very variable, as discussed above. I tend to use words like "avant-garde" or "innovative" – most precisely, though, I am bound to say "post avant-garde" is horribly accurate, but academic jargon. I talk about the word here. Publication of the first academic journal dedicated to this writing, Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry makes British Innovative Poetry probably the front-runner.