Jihad

James Wood

• The New Poetry edited by Michael Hulse, David Kennedy and David Morley
  Bloodaxe, 352 pp, £25.00, May 1993, ISBN 1 85224 244 2
• Who Whispered Near Me by Killarney Clary
  Bloodaxe, 64 pp, £5.95, February 1993, ISBN 1 85224 149 7
• Sunset Grill by Anne Rouse
  Bloodaxe, 64 pp, £5.95, March 1993, ISBN 1 85224 219 1
• Half Moon Bay by Paul Mills
  Carcanet, 95 pp, £6.95, February 1993, ISBN 1 85754 000 X
• Shoah by Harry Smart
  Faber, 74 pp, £5.99, April 1993, ISBN 0 571 16793 4
• The Autonomous Region by Kathleen Jamie
  Bloodaxe, 79 pp, £7.95, March 1993, ISBN 1 85224 173 X
• Collected Poems by F.T. Prince
  Carcanet, 319 pp, £25.00, March 1993, ISBN 1 85754 030 1
• Stirring Stuff by Selwyn Pritchard
  Sinclair-Stevenson, 145 pp, £8.99, April 1993, ISBN 1 85619 308 X
• News from the Brighton Front by Nicki Jackowska
  Sinclair-Stevenson, 86 pp, £7.99, April 1993, ISBN 1 85619 306 3
• Translations from the Natural World by Les Murray
  Carcanet, 67 pp, £6.95, March 1993, ISBN 1 85754 005 0

Poetry anthologies are now expected to make holy war; but what to do with The New Poetry, which strives so earnestly to turn its trumpet-majors into angels? The 55 poets collected here are, it seems, seraphs of a benevolent novelty, somehow singing their good news at once uniquely and in shimmering unison. ‘A multicultural society,’ write the editors in their introduction, ‘challenges the very idea of a centre, and produces pluralism of poetic voice.’ This plurality has, in the last decade, produced a new poetry, one which ‘emphasises accessibility, democracy and responsiveness, humour and seriousness, and reaffirms the art’s significance as public utterance. The new poetry highlights the beginning of the end of British poetry’s tribal divisions and isolation, and a new cohesiveness – its constituent parts “talk” to one another readily, eloquently and freely, while preserving their unique identities.’