Beyond the Lyric: A Map of Contemporary British Poetry

Beyond the Lyric is "a book of enthusiams": an intelligent and wittily presented map of contemporary British poetry today. Today's field is vibrant, exciting and diverse, and Fiona Sampson provides a radical map of living British poets, grouped according to the kind of poetry they write. From the groundbreaking, bread-and-butter diction of the Plain Dealers (Ruth Fainlight and Alan Brownjohn) to the baroque sensibilities of Dandies (Glyn Maxwell, Hugo Williams), we are introduced to the Oxford Elegists (John Fuller, Andrew Motion and Mick Imlah) and the New Formalists (Don Paterson, Mimi Khalvati), the Anecdoctalists (Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage) and Mythopoesis (Robin Robertson). Sampson's close reading dramatically shifts the critical focus back to the poem itself, and asks the big questions about what makes a poem.