The Forward Book of Poetry 2021

Review by Jackie of Duloch Library Tuesday Reading Group

There's just one writer in this book of whom I've heard! However, Vicki Feaver has contributed 1974 and The Larder. I've also read Witches and Sloes, the latter with her own commentary on its creation. Maybe Nina Mingya Powles gets close with her Sonnet with Particles of Gold and Pascale Petit's Tiger Gran is lovely, but for the rest - I feel sadness for the writers and readers.
I grew up and have grown old with the likes of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, the Romantics, Masefield, de le Mare and Heaney. Even the misery of Wilfred Owen (but without the sonorous voice which used to narrate him) has rhythm, rhyme, form, purpose, alliteration and all the other tools which go into creating a word picture. Blank verse has a valuable place, but 'stream of consciousness' omitting all punctuation? Startling titles which intend to shock, and line arrangements with no clear purpose except to confuse (or take up as much space as possible)?
In the Forward it is noted that submissions pre-date the present pandemic, but not the judging. Perhaps this collection will come to reflect the turmoil and trauma caused during Covid 19. And maybe, just maybe, a new generation of poets will arrive, using the age-old devices of verse to record the hopes and fears, triumphs and disasters for the human race when the world war against Covid 19 has passed.