Bloodaxe Identity

Coming to Shakespeare & Co. next Monday, readings from the anthology Identity Parade include A.B. Jackson, Annie Freud, Sally Read, Ahren Warner and Roddy Lumsden. Aiming to illustrate the direction of today's British and Irish poetry, the collection is described as "Eclectic, diverse and wide-ranging in scope", examining our political 21st century locus on cultural and religious pluralism. 


Despite the rather childish bickering from poets not included in the final selection (*cough Todd Swift cough*), Roddy's final list makes sense from what must have been a mammoth cull. While it is a shame that Katy Evans Bush's work didn't make it (published just after the list was finalised), it is good to see a full sweep of British and Irish pieces. The final collection makes for an interesting portrait of current poetry.


Some good words:


'Imagination, intelligence, scope, ambition, technical power and musicality: these, rather than attitudes or stylistic similarity, are what mark these writers out' - Sean O'Brien, Poetry Review


'Lumsden hosts a supremely eclectic party for 85 "new" British and Irish poets… [including] generation-definers such as Daljit Nagra and Kate Clanchy, Colette Bryce and Alice Oswald, and a host of guests who will count – for many readers – as smart or seductive discoveries' – Boyd Tonkin, Independent


'This important and timely book offers a fascinating window on to the wide variety of poetry being produced in Britain and Ireland at the moment… It's an exhilarating anthology, its tone one of magnanimous pluralism. Not since Edward Lucie Smith's British Poetry Since 1945, published by Penguin in 1970, has one anthology embraced such a wide range of both experimental and formalist styles' – Charles Bainbridge, Guardian


Here is a short piece by the editor himself.



Intramuros by Roddy Lumsden
She lies in her well-kept apartment
above the spick and span cathedral
in the heart of the walled city
above Manila Bay and she dreams
of the great, ruined cities of Europe:
Vienna crumbling into the ocean,
Warsaw in a plague of frogs and flies
and London, where all the black men
have learned to talk like white men,
where all the white men have begun
to talk like cartoon characters.
One week left until Christmas
and you can't buy a Scrabble set
in any shop. The cartoon characters
are warming their three-fingered hands
around a bonfire made of love letters.



So if you want to come along for a taster of the anthology, I'll be there from 7pm. Don't be late or you'll have to sit on the stairs.


Yours,




Mustard