Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry

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Caroline Bird, Malika Booker, Mary Jean Chen, Tishani Doshi, Will Harris, Stephen Sexton, Danez Smith, Kae Tempest and more The semantic field of the body is notable throughout the poem, with examples typically drawn from two sources. The first is the physical descriptions of the girl and her friend, with a focus on describing different parts of her and what she is wearing. The second main source is through descriptions of their surrounding environment, such as the “warm flank of the house” and “eye of the street”. The humanising descriptions of these surroundings are interesting because they encourage the idea of onlookers to the scene, further increasing the sense of importance of these actions. Interpreture gives ‘An Easy Passage’ a difficulty rating of 4, meaning that it is deemed to be a relatively difficult poem. The meaning is somewhat challenging to understand at first, not helped by the very dense structure which makes it difficult to separate out different sections. As such, these different factors mean that extra focus and attention needs to be made to ensure a full understanding of the poem. ‘An Easy Passage’ It is the perfect introduction to a wide range of contemporary poetry: works that speak of violence, danger and fear, of love and all that opposes love, in forms of language broken and reshaped by the need to communicate what it is to be alive now, here. The ambition of Coste Lewis’s project is revealed in the precision of its limitations, as described in the first sentence of the prologue:

Interpreture gives ‘Eat Me’ a difficulty rating of 3, meaning that it is deemed to be of average difficulty. The difficulty is spread relatively evenly throughout the different aspects of the poem, with the potential of challenging techniques being partially outweighed by the variety of devices, making analysis relatively easy in an exam situation. ‘Eat Me’ I will say that this list was the hardest we’ve done so far—poetry is extremely subjective, and true consensus was rare (except for Claudia Rankine, for whom almost everyone in the office voted). And NB that for this one, we excluded huge “collected poems” for range. So please feel extra free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-03-29 06:07:56 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40412114 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierOcr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9740 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000602 Openlibrary_edition Childhood: This theme is brought into the poem through the ideas of transition away from childhood, while still retaining some imagery in the poem such as the physical descriptions of the girls. This anthology of anthologies draws on the ten Forward Books of Poetry published to accompany the prizes between 2001 and 2010. Society and Culture: It can be interpreted that while the poem considers cultural ideas such as growing up and rites of passage, there are also broader criticisms of the concept of adulthood such as the ‘drab’ working worlds and the plans and dreams which constantly fail to come to fruition. Bright Dead Things is organized into four untitled sections, the first of which opens with “How to Triumph Like a Girl,” which sets the tone for the collection to come—we will be in motion, we will wander, and we will not skirt genuine feeling in favor of irony. “I like the lady horses best, / how they make it all look easy, / like running 40 miles per hour / is as easy as taking a nap, or grass,” she writes. The speaker of the poem admits that she likes the horses mainly because they’re ladies, which means she might share something elemental with them. It means “that somewhere inside the delicate / skin of my body, there pumps / an 8-pound female horse heart.” This is a book that will not hesitate to talk about heart, to name that heart.

Let me tell you about “Romantic Comedies,” perhaps my all-time favorite contemporary poem, which consists of premises for romantic comedies: “She likes things one way and he likes them the other” and “She’s a pale-skinned aesthete who edits a webzine, and he’s a suntanned meathead completely perplexed by the masthead” and “He calls Nashville, laughingly, Nashvegas, but she calls Nashville, icily, Nashville.” Besides being funny, this collection also believes deeply in connection, in—yes—love. Besides being funny, this collection also believes deeply in connection, in—yes—love. “I still love the river, I told her,” Leidner writes in “The River.” “But I do not love it because it is deep, and fast, and drowns many people. I love it because it runs behind my house, and I have lived above it forever.” – Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor The Forward Prizes for Poetry have established themselves as central to the literary landscape of modern Britain. Andrew Marr The book is also artful, beautiful, sometimes funny, subtle when subtlety is required, razor sharp when that better suits her needs. It investigates memory and identity and the nature of narrative and self-doubt and self-expression. I don’t know anyone who has read it who was not profoundly moved by it. As Dan Chiasson put it in The New Yorker, “The realization at the end of this book sits heavily upon the heart: ‘This is how you are a citizen,’ Rankine writes. ‘Come on. Let it go. Move on.’ As Rankine’s brilliant, disabusing work, always aware of its ironies, reminds us, ‘moving on’ is not synonymous with ‘leaving behind.’” – Emily Temple, Senior EditorA selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard). The Forwards are among the world’s most coveted poetry honours. They have been awarded annually since 1992 for the Best Collection, Best First Collection and Best Single Poem published in Britain and Ireland, and the roster of winning, shortlisted and highly commended poets regularly juxtaposes familiar canonical names with fresh voices. Re read ‘To My Nine-Year-Old Self’ by Helen Dunmore and ‘From the Journal of a Disappointed Man’ by Andrew Motion. Compare the ways in which both poets portray personal experiences. Explore the ways in which femininity and masculinity are contrasted in ‘The Chainsaw Versus The Pampas Grass’ by Simon Armitage. The Forwards are among the world’s most coveted poetry honours. They are awarded annually for the Best Collection, Best First Collection and Best Single Poem published in Britain and Ireland and are recognised for bringing together familiar names and exciting new talent.

Use these questions to practice integrating comparison into essays, and strengthen your understanding of the prescribed poems, or as AS Level practice questions. In this course, John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores the twenty poems that make up the ‘Poems of the Decade’ cluster for A Level English Literature (Edexcel). Each poem is read in detail, with a short commentary highlighting aspects of language, style, themes, motifs, and so on. In the case of Patience Agbabi’s ‘Eat Me’, for example, we think about the extent to which we can identify the speaker of the poem with the author herself, the question of whether the couple of the poem can be decribed as happy, and the influence of Robert Browning’s ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ (1836) and Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865). When we come to Simon Armitage’s ‘Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass’, we think about the theme of man versus nature, the concept of ‘anthropomorphisation’, and the final lines of the poem in which it has become clear that the pampas grass has beaten the chainsaw. And so on for the whole selection. Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.The very rigid form of the poem helps to represent the strict regime imposed by the feeder, and how it has become commonplace. There are a total of ten tercet stanzas, which adds to the overall regimented mood. In addition, there is assonance between the final words on the first and third lines of each stanza, such as “cake” and “weight”, with an alternative form of assonance in each line which breaks from the traditional idea of using rhyme. This is a very interesting rhyme scheme for a reader because it enables variety of language while still maintaining a sense of conformity and expectations, potentially echoing the expectations of the feeder. There is also the use of possessive language, such as “his” or even further objectification through the likening to objects, such as “his jacuzzi”. This would help to make the descriptions much more emotive for a reader who would recognise the strong objectification and mistreatment, therefore developing much more sympathy for the narrator. This in turn creates a strange mix of emotions by the end of the poem with the murder of the feeder, with readers potentially feeling happy that the woman has been freed but conflicted over the means of this escape. There are also consistent end-stopped lines on the final line of each stanza (although again with the exception of stanza six), which reinforce the idea of routine and consistency. However, there is also a slight break in this structure too with the final two lines of the last stanza both ending with full stops, which signifies the death of the man, and by extension, the relationship. This helps to make the poem more dramatic, and also bring a sense of unease to the reader through the way in which the expected pattern and rhythm has been disrupted. Poetic Techniques Identity: Concepts of personal identity are a key part of ‘An Easy Passage’ due to the idea of self-development and growing up, claiming an identity within the world. This is also a key aspect of many cultures view on the idea of a rite of passage. Poems of the Decade brings together more than one hundred poems from the many thousands submitted to the Forward Prizes for Poetry in the first decade of the 21st century.