The Salt Book of Younger Poets

THE SALT BOOK OF YOUNGER POETS

edited by Roddy Lumsden & Eloise Stonborough
Salt Publishing, October 2011. Paperback, £10.99

The Salt Book of Younger Poets showcases a new generation of British poets born since the mid-80s. Many of these poets embrace new technologies such as blogs, social networking and webzines to meet, mentor, influence and publish their own work and others’. Some poets here were winners of the Foyle young poet awards when at school. Some have published pamphlets in series such as tall-lighthouse Pilot and Faber New Poets. All of them are working away on first collections. This is a chance to encounter the poets who will dominate UK poetry in years to come.

Rachael Allen | Daniel Barrow | Jack Belloli | Jay Bernard | James Brookes | Phil Brown | Niall Campbell | Kayo Chingonyi | Miranda Cichy | John Clegg | Nia Davies | Amy De’ath | Inua Ellams | Charlotte Geater | Tom Gilliver | Dai George | Emily Hasler | Oli Hazzard | Dan Hitchens | Sarah Howe | Andrew Jamison | Annie Katchinska | Andrew McMillan | Siofra McSherry | Ben Maier | Laura Marsh | Annabella Massey | James Midgley | Helen Mort | Charlotte Newman | Richard O’Brien | Richard Osmond | Vidyan Ravinthiran | Sophie Robinson | Charlotte Runcie | Ashna Sarkar | William Searle | Colette Sensier | Warsan Shire | Lavinia Singer | Adham Smart | Martha Sprackland | Eloise Stonborough | Emily Tesh | Jack Underwood | Ahren Warner | Ben Wilkinson | Sophie Yeo

Available to pre-order from Amazon.

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Faber Firsts, Poetry Classics & Poet to Poet on special offer

There's a lot to be said for brilliantly designed and stunningly produced books, second fiddle though these things are - and certainly should be - to brilliant, stunning writing. When the two are combined, though, the book lover really can't ask for much more. And so it is with these recent Faber Firsts reissues: beautiful, highly affordable hardbacks of classic contemporary collections, including Armitage's Kid, Cope's Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Paterson's Nil Nil and Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings.































They seem a continuation of the beautiful Faber 80th Anniversary Poetry Classics, selected poems of various poets which include similarly stunning designs and not only make the perfect gift for the newcomer to British and Irish poetry, but are tempting to those of us who already own other, doubtlessly less stylish, selecteds of Yeats, Plath, Hughes, Auden, Betjeman and Eliot.


































Good news, then, for those of us who live in or around Sheffield, as the Blackwell Bookshop on Mappin St (just off West St) has the poetry section bursting with these, and all on offer at 3 for the price of 2, alongside a healthy selection of titles from the Poet to Poet series, also 3 for 2, all of which contain an illuminating introduction and selection from a great poet's work by a contemporary (I especially recommend Michael Hofmann's John Berryman, Maurice Riordan's Hart Crane, and August Kleinzahler's Thom Gunn). As Tony Williams puts it: "I covet the books even though I already own other editions".

More about → Faber Firsts, Poetry Classics & Poet to Poet on special offer