Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania

Diamond Cutters names the tradition of Visionary Poetry from the early 20th century with Kathleen Raine and David Gascoyne through to contemporary poets in the early 21st in both Britain and America as well as Australia at a time when spiritual consciousness is more important for us than ever; not simply as an inward or private language, but as a way of actively seeing and reading what is going on in our world today at a time of critical personal and political transition.

This unique anthology (400pp), co-edited with Andrew Harvey, names and celebrates this impulse and focus, taking poetry beyond social realism towards the Source which is both our origin and transformation as human beings. At the same time, it is deeply political and ecological, critiquing the restrictive ideologies that limit our minds, our freedom, and our compassion. Poets include William Stafford, Robert Bly (now 90), Jeni Couzyn, Andrew Harvey, Dorothy Walters, Janine Canan, Gabriel Bradford Millar, Aidan Andrew Dun, Thanissara, Niall McDevitt, Rose Flint, Thomas R. Smith, Irina Kuzminsky, John Fox, and Philip Wells. It has global reach and emphasis towards what it means to realize ourselves as 'One World People'.

The contributors of Diamond Cutters are poets famous and obscure, living and dead, who have come together from points across the globe to present this work, which is being hailed as “Neo-Metaphysical Verse” for our times. “Neo-Metaphysical Verse,” is that which opposes directly the bathetic, the ugly, and the trivial, that have manifested so broadly across our world. Diamond Cutters provides a move to end that regime, clothed simply with the truth and beauty. (Andrew Harvey and Jay Ramsay Diamond Cutters)