Jonathan Glover

"The teasing title poem of this book is about weather. Rain falls, wind cracks its cheeks as in Lear; the noises are drops like kisses falling, 'fallen into birdsong on Mars'. What would it sound like, be like, to hear it? The poem wants to know what it can't yet know. But as the book proceeds, the poet -- on a human heath, tormented by loss -- hears something like it, unearthly sounds on a planet without atmosphere, sound making quite another kind of sense. Jon Glover wrote most of the poems in this collection before his wife's sudden death from cancer in 2019. He developed the themes and fragmenting style of his previous book, Glass is Elastic (2012), where language was always quizzing itself and how it might relate to the actual and the historical world. Intense, playful, unpredictable, the poems surprised. Here, in the disturbing environments of Upstate New York, Calgary Bay or his Bolton front room the poet confronts illness (his own), hospitals (his visits) and wonderful ambulances (his transports). He resists attempts to see hints or destinies. Then bereavement throws up an actuality of a different order. The collection ends with a mock-sonnet sequence, written during the pandemic, in which the poet tries all the doors and windows to find her, to speak with her -- love poems where love has not changed but its circumstances have. 'Will I want ever to get out of this place -- the past of the poems in this book?' the poet asks. There are no answers, yet."--Provided by publisher.

Only twenty or twenty-five years ago poets were employed in universities but only rarely because they were poets or to teach writing. It could be contended that in the last few years there has been a massive shift of cultural capital - sharing financial and ideological interest in poetry, poets and associated social and educational structures. Today, perhaps poetry's hotspots have shifted to universities. Although other creative subjects (art, drama, music) have long been part of university degrees, creative writing has, after a long wait, become both welcome and controversial. Higher Education's Quality Assurance Agency has to define 'Benchmarks' for study and assessment in all subjects, and its Benchmark on English includes important statements about writing. There is to be a QAA Benchmark on Creative Writing, and there is already one, widely used, drafted by the National Association of Writers in Education. NAWE publishes substantial resources to support writers who work from primary school to PhD levels. There are additional debates on learning and teaching, with research material on creative writing in degrees located in the Higher Education English Subject Centre run by the Council for College and University English. There are also many books on creative writing, some aimed at the general public and some for university students. Although some are of particular significance (for example, those by Hobsbaum and Wainwright) listed in Further Reading, it is not my intention to comment on them here though they might be thought of as a vital part of poetry's visible, outward structure.
It may seem odd to open an account of poetry's outward forms, its public and institutional infrastructures, with a list of agencies which promote standards, frameworks, guidelines and rules. So I start with more unofficial outward forms though they are probably better known to writers than the QAA Benchmarks.
Originally conceived in Devon by John Moat and John Fairfax, with early support from Ted Hughes, Arvon was a sort of democratisation of the Cambridge and London Group philosophy in which sharing poetry, and discussion of new manuscripts from an author who was sitting with the rest of the group, was thought the most creative, and personally engaging, method of passing on both motivation and skill:
Arvon was founded in 1968 by two poets, John Moat and John Fairfax...

Complete Poems brings together the published and unpublished work of one of the most significant poets of the late twentieth century, founding editor of Stand and of the Northern House imprint. As well as reprinting all the poems included in Silkin’s books (from The Portrait and Other Poems in 1950 to Making a Republic in 2002), it includes significant poems previously unpublished or published only in a wide variety of journals, and work transcribed from manuscripts. Complete Poems demands a new perception of Silkin’s language and his concerns, the breadth of his passionately humane response to war and the Holocaust, and his scrutiny of humanity alongside nature.