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Agenda Volume 43 No 4 / Vol 44 No 1
50th Birthday Celebration for Greg Delanty
http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/agenda-a-transatlantic-feast-of-poetry-that-matters-1607697.html
Agenda Volume. 43 Nos. 2-3
Link to review of the Lauds issue of Agenda in Arts & Books pages of the Independent Friday, 25th April, 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/agenda-the-long-and-the-short-of-exellence-in-poetry-815709.html
Special supplementary features for W.H. Auden:
Two poems:
Michael Alexander: To W.H. Auden in Heaven, with Apologies
Andrew Saltarelli: The Hall of American Pilgrims
Nanos Valaoritis: A Memoir and biography of Marie Wilson
Plus for students and teachers: Roger Elkin's analyses of a poem by W.H. Auden, and a poem by Louis MacNeice.
The latest, handsomely-produced issue of Agenda, the ‘Past Histories’ issue (Vol. 43 No.1),
features some very interesting, trenchant work. The attractive cover boasts a rarely-seen stained-glass window, one of a series in Pembroke College, Cambridge, featuring animals and text from the poems of Ted Hughes who was an undergraduate there.
In this comprehensive journal containing translations/versions by well-known translators such as Michael Hamburger, Stephen Cohn, Martyn Crucefix, Sean O’Brien, Patrick McGuinness and lesser-known voices both male and female, including the Australian poet Alison Croggon, Charlie Louth, Terese Coe, Will Stone and Anna Martin, Rilke is successfully ‘reborn in English dress’.
Other sections include fascinating essays with original slants on Rilke by, among others, Clive Wilmer, Patrick Bridgwater, Manfred Engel, Peter Robinson, Rüdiger Görner; a section on poems to, on and for Rilke which adds a personal, extra celebratory approach, again by little known and well-known poets such as John Burnside, John Greening, David Brooks, and a section of translations of essays on Rilke from the french of French Resistance poet, Jean Cassou, Yves Bonnefoy and Philippe Jaccottet. The two chosen young Broadsheet poets in the magazine (with the accompanying online Broadsheet 8 for young poets and painters – www.agendapoetry.co.uk ), Adam O’Riordain and Zoe Brigley, who are each given a generous spread of poems, are particularly mature and talented.
Included is new work from Eavan Boland, John Fuller, Greg Delanty, John Deane, John Kinsella, Clive Wilmer, Peter Dale, Harry Guest, Michael Hamburger, Alison Brackenbury, John Greening, Mimi Khalvati, John Haynes, Susan Wicks, Iain Britton, Mc. Donald Dixon - and fresh, lesser-known voices, such as the chosen twenty-four year old chosen young Broadsheet Poet, Simon Pomery.
This single issue of Agenda poetry magazine is very refreshing and readable. It
marks a return to mainly single issues for English speaking poets (and translators), and to the classical, traditional mainly black and white covers headed by the David Jones’ lettering for the pocket-sized journals.
In the Editorial, Pádraic Fallon, the important Irish poet (1905-1974) is quoted from his prose writings: ‘The poem finds the poet’. Similarly, the varied poems on the theme of ‘Water’ here seem to have found this issue and shaped it of their own accord, giving this section and the issue as a whole that ‘personality’ which Fallon accords to the most interesting books.
The impressive array in this US issue of Agenda of poems by fresh, energetic voices, male and female, known and mainly unknown, demonstrates the energy and variety of the challenging corpus of poetry emerging from the U.S. in the last of the current international series of Agenda issues. The chosen poems, culled both from academic and non-academic circles, are set on survival. Poets such as John Roberts, Virgil Suarez, Jack Gilbert, Greg Delanty, Jared Carter, Jackson Wheeler, Ben Mazer, Kay Ryan, Samuel Menashe, Martha Carlston-Bradley, Elena Karina Byrne, Dana Gioia, Linda Gregg, W.D. Snodgrass, Suzanne Lummis, Sandra Gilbert, Stephen Knauth, Anne Carson, Georgia Tiffany, among others, come from all over the U.S. from East, West and mid U.S. |
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2005 Special Issue on Australian Poetry (Vol. 41 Nos. 1-2) contains poems by some of that country's leading poets, and essays on new and established poets. The issue was well received and reviewed extensively in The Independent newspaper (with a special feature on Clive James). Here is an excellent introduction both to the exciting world of contemporary Australian poetry and to its rich cultural heritage.
Quotes from the Independent, Friday 16th September, 2005, entitled:
‘Agenda’: an Australian Victory
John Kinsella, the well-known Australian poet and Cambridge academic, has described the culture of literary journals as ‘integral to the vitality of poetry and language itself’. ‘Literary journals,’ he avows, ‘are crucibles of the word.’ The first ever double Australian issue of Agenda magazine does indeed serve as a ‘crucible for the word’, establishing Australia as a vital, unique and highly energetic literary force. It is more of an anthology than magazine (224 pages) and an essential buy for anyone who wants to be au fait with the history, development and present state of poetry in Australia.
T.G. H. Strehlow is quoted from Barry Hill’s prizewinning biography: Broken Song as saying of the Aboriginal song: ‘If everything is vitally interconnected, then the whole world is a poem, an enchantment simply awaiting notation, or indication.’ The richness and diversity of the contents of this Agenda lead to the thought that the whole world is ‘an enchantment.’
The Australian issue is an education in all the outbacks and inbacks of that country’s poetic territories.
Dennis O’Driscoll
A rich and dynamic choice, a very nice balance of poetry and criticism.
Jan Owen
I am proud to be associated with this issue. It looks brilliant and ... a great job has been done.
John Kinsella |
The excellent journal, MODERN POETRY IN TRANSLATION, THIRD SERIES NUMBER THREE (edited by David and Helen Constantine), recommends the recent Translation as Metamorphosis issue of Agenda , Vol 40 No 4:
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Translation as Metamorphosis
This issue includes translations/versions from 7th century BC to the present day, with poems from Germany, Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, Kurdistan, Persia, Poland, Sicily, Spain, Russia, Tunisia and Turkey. There are also challenging essays, reviews and a general section. Featured in the Independent newspaper.
A fascinating and indispensable edition of the august literary journal, covering every aspect of literary translation – a must!'
(Some copies still available).
Read more here. |
