Agenda is one of the best known and most highly respected poetry journals in the world, having been founded in 1959 by Ezra Pound and William Cookson.

It is now edited by Patricia McCarthy, who co-edited the magazine with William Cookson for four years until his death in January 2003. She is continuing, as Seamus Heaney says, ‘to uphold the lofty standards of Agenda’.

"Agenda is one of the two literary periodicals in Britain. I admire it for its attentiveness to all kinds of contemporary poetry… and its consistent stress on the importance of poetry in translation from other languages." Thom Gunn

"Agenda, as the title insists, does several things that need to be done if literary culture is to stay in good shape. First of all, it stimulates and sponsors new poetry by poets whose writings and espousals have given the magazine its personality from the beginning. Agenda has a second important function which it discharges by doing work of critical advocacy for poets of marked or under-rated achievement, living and dead." Seamus Heaney

Timeless Quotes by William Cookson >

Agenda News

Agenda wishes all its contributors, readers and supporters a very happy Christmas and a healthy and fulfilling New Year.

Christmas Supplement now online (poems and paintings)

Latest issue of Agenda Vol 44 No 4 / Vol 45 No 1 published 14th Dec 2009

Special focus on 15 young poets and on young essayists/reviewers - to take Agenda into the future.

Special feature: Bernard Spencer Centenary Supplement introduced and compiled by Peter Robinson.

Poems, translations, essays, reviews. New poems by Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Peter Dale, Greg Delanty, Sudeep Sen, Lynne Wycherley, Tony Conran and others.