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| Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century | Book review A new collection showcases young poets whose work soars above the tired editorial clichĂ©sIn 1962, Penguin published an anthology edited by Al Alvarez, bombastically entitled The New Poetry. Alvarez introduced his selection with a now-famous essay in which he expressed his belief that the postwar English literary scene had become insular and moribund, its poetry calcifying into the "academic-administrative verse, polite, knowledgable, efficient" typified by the Movement poets of the 1950s. His anthology, conceived to counter this process, championed younger poets whom he believed capable of "open[ing] poetry up to new areas of experience"; almost half a century on, his lineup, which included Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn and (in the 1966 reprint) Sylvia Plath, has stood the test of time.No surprise, then, that James Byrne and Clare Pollard, editors of Bloodaxe's zeitgeist-chasing Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, cite Alvarez as inspiration. Their anthology, they tell us, is intended to showcase the work of poets who "address the particularity of being alive now". The undeniable value of the enterprise makes their introduction, jammed as it is with the same tired clichĂ©s that are wheeled out every time anyone wants to publicise a new poetry venture, doubly disappointing."For many years the poetry world has belonged to older writers. Few young poets were published and fewer were nominated for major prizes. An invitation to a poetry reading conjured thoughts of warm white wine in a pokey bookshop," claim the editors. Really? What about Simon Armitage, who published his first collection at 26, Owen Sheers (ditto), or Kathleen Jamie (aged 20)? What about Carol Ann Duffy, whose first collection came out when she was in her teens? Or Pollard and Byrne themselves, who brought out their debuts at 20 and 26 respectively? Such baggy generalisations are irritating; worse, alas, is to come. "As the credit crunch exposes the superficiality of many of the last decade's bloated, corporate values," they continue, "there is a young generation who seem to be hungering for the authentic and DIY . . . new poet-promoters are setting up their own nights . . . and magazines . . ." Goodness. While the editors do flag up several genuinely innovative schemes – Faber's new pamphlet series, for example – the suggestion that the upcoming generation invented poetry evenings and magazines would be frustrating even without the heavy-handed appropriation of the credit crunch.Rather than being bolstered by their editors' introduction, then, the poems are left to fight their way free of it. And at this point, thankfully, things take a happier turn. The poems themselves are a mixed bag, as you'd expect from an anthology of largely untried poets, but the handful of poorly conceived or executed verses are quickly forgotten in the broader sweep of natural, vital poems that come together within these pages.The poets themselves are presented alphabetically – a decision which, while impeccably democratic, has the effect of making the anthology feel a little jittery, with no deference paid to the idea that some might sit together more comfortably than others. Occasionally, however, this happens by chance, and at such moments the whole edifice takes flight. Just before the halfway point there's a lovely glissando through three very good female poets (Miriam Gamble, Sarah Jackson and Annie Katchinska) whose styles and subjects bleed easily and usefully into one another. We slide from Gamble's sticky mix of re-evaluated mythology and contemporary knowingness (her strongest poem, "On Fancying American Film Stars", combines voguish in-jokes with the lush imagery of "one small cloud which loiters . . . / putty grey, shedding rain like tiny lead balloons") into Jackson's close-up universe of parents and children, in which the powerful, almost threatening intimacy of poems such as "Leftovers", where a babysitter enters her charge's room and "sit[s] on stripped pine floors, / pretending it's all mine", offsets and complements Gamble's wider world-view. From there, it's a fluent segue into Katchinska's examinations of everyday minutiae, similarly small-scale but oblique, approached with an emigrant's slantwise sensibility. The sense of being caught up in an impromptu narrative is satisfying.Away from this central arc, there are many flashes of brilliance: 18-year-old Amy Blakemore (the youngest poet here) offers a woozily glamorous description of a high-school graduation party at which "fallen silver streamers glitter in corners like smashed braces"; Joe Dunthorne's lubricious, inebriated "Cave Dive", in which the gorgeous concluding image of air bubbles as marbles ("From his lips / he scatters balls of glass") gleams on the page like a jewel; Toby Martinez de las Rivas's "Poem, Three Weeks After Conception", which reads like an updated version of Yeats's "A Prayer for My Daughter" – perfectly timeless, but (with its address to "you / for whom the best wine in the world will be pressed in Kent. / Who will live to see supermarkets dictating military policy to governments") perfectly now.Of the 21 poets, however, three, finally, stand out. Adam O'Riordan brings an understated music to poems of birth, death and love, proving that novelty needn't be ostentatious. His poem on "The Leverets", "Clawed from its nest into the cold world / sudden and bright and, in an instant, over", stopped me in my tracks. Heather Phillipson writes with brittle beauty on the obsessiveness of love. And Jack Underwood (who, along with De las Rivas and Phillipson, features in the new Faber pamphlet series) deals out oddball meditations on animals ("So, Weasel, it has come to this; / to your thighs like tall glasses of milk, / your biscuit hair") that are striking and bewitching. It's possible, of course, that in half a century's time, their names – unlike those of Alvarez's poets – will have disappeared without a ripple. For now, though, they deserve to be read.PoetrySarah Crownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The Guardian rosetta: the Datablog reference guide to nearly everything - ISO country codes, parliament, university, LAs and NHS codes Looking for ISO country codes? This is now the place to come. We want to make it easier to map data and keep it consistent. Take a look at our reference guide to IDs, codes and names and see how you can help make it better• Get the dataThe actual Rosetta stone is a crucially important ancient Egyptian artifact instrumental in advancing modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.Data visualisation today can be similarly tricky - country spellings vary wildly, to take one example. The Guardian uses Burma, for instance, while the UN prefers Myanmar. Is it North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Closer to home, the Press Association will talk about the parliamentary constituency of Hampshire East, while the Office for National Statistics uses East Hampshire. You get the idea. Recently we've been trying to help our datasets work in the world of linked data - the idea that data needs to be consistently readable across the web. We've started adding ISO country codes to country-level data, for instance and we're going to add in any other codes we can think of to make it easier for you to map our numbers.So, we've started compiling a reference spreadsheet on Google docs. So far on it we have:• ISO country codes• Internet domains• UK parliamentary constituencies, local authorities and NHS trusts plus their strategic health authorities• US presidents and UK prime ministers• British university codes from UCAS• US state codesIt's just the beginning - we're going to update this all the time. What would be useful for you? Let us know and we'll get the reference.Download the data• DATA: download the reference spreadsheetCan you do something with this data?Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on TwitterInternetHigher educationLocal governmentUnited StatesReference and languagesSimon Rogersguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Preface of Beyond the state in rural Uganda by Ben Jones Read the preface of Ben Jone's book, Beyond the state in rural Uganda, which has won the Elliott P Skinner Book AwardBeyond the StatePolitics and historyNewsAid and developmentUgandaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
BBC director general Mark Thompson thrown by PD James's detective work Today programme guest editor – and former BBC governor – gives corporation's top manager a thorough grillingHe has faced down his organisation's fiercest interrogators, including John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman, but BBC director general Mark Thompson finally met his match today when he was grilled by the 89-year-old crime writer PD James.Baroness James, a former governor of the BBC, had Thompson firmly on the back foot when she interviewed him as one of the guest editors of BBC Radio 4's Today.She was scathing about the large salaries being paid to BBC executives, programmes such as Dog Borstal and Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets, and the controversial decision to drop Arlene Phillips as a judge from Strictly Come Dancing, which she said could "only be a kind of ageism".The BBC, said James, was like a "large and unwieldy ship … with a crew that was somewhat discontented and a little mutinous, the ship sinking close to the Plimsoll line and the customers feeling they have paid too much for their journey and not quite sure where they are going or who is the captain".The director general defended the six-figure pay packets of some of the corporation's top management, after figures released last month showed that 37 BBC executives – not including on-air talent – earned more than the Prime Minister's salary of ÂŁ198,000, with more than 300 paid over ÂŁ100,000. James said the "extraordinarily large salaries" were "very difficult to justify".Thompson said most of the BBC's highest earners could make more in the commercial sector. "I think most people would accept that if we want to have the best people working for the BBC, delivering the best programmes and best services... the BBC has to bear to some extent in mind the external market," he said."The controller of BBC1 is going to be spending about ÂŁ1bn a year on television programmes for that channel. We really want to make sure we have got the best person doing that job."The current controller of BBC1 was working for a commercial broadcaster and we got her to come back. She will – like most of the people on that list – get less from the BBC than they were earning or could earn otherwise. They have to take a pay cut. We are still absolutely losing key staff to commercial broadcasters who are still paying top dollar."James said some BBC programmes were indistinguishable from those being provided by its commercial rivals. Asked by Thompson to provide examples – "You need to give me a couple of shockers I can respond to" – she cited Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets, Britain's Tallest Man, Britain's Worst Teeth, Dog Borstal, and Help Me Anthea I'm Infested, presented by Anthea Turner."I missed Dog Borstal, I don't know whether you managed to catch it," joked Thompson. "It sounds potentially rather interesting."Thompson denied the decision to drop 66-year-old Phillips from Strictly Come Dancing had been motivated by her age. But he accepted that the BBC had to do more to combat ageism in its choice of presenters and more accurately reflect the age make-up of the population. "I don't believe the decision taken around Arlene Phillips was ageism. But in so far as from time to time people make decisions on the basis of age, they really shouldn't."When he pointed out that Phillips would return in a new dance programme on the BBC in the new year, James told him: "That was probably a response to the outrage when she went [from Strictly Come Dancing]."James also took the director general to task on BBC bureaucracy. "You have a director of marketing, communications and audiences who gets over ÂŁ300,000, then there is a director of communications. Well, I thought that's what the previous director was doing, and he gets ÂŁ225,000. One wonders what actually is going on here?"Thompson admitted bureaucracy was a "real issue" at the BBC, saying: "It is a many headed hydra. You cut off one head and two more appear. So let's be honest about the fact it's a real issue. One of the things we are looking at is whether we can simply make a fully accountable commitment to how much of the licence fee we actually spend on content."Thompson said the BBC had tried over the past five years to get its spending on overheads down.But he insisted that the 17-fold ratio between his own ÂŁ834,000 package and average BBC pay was far smaller than in most FTSE-listed private companies, where top bosses could earn 100 or more times as much as average staff members. "It really is a privilege (to work at the BBC) and everyone here in the senior echelons should accept that there will be a very big discount, they will get paid much less than they could earn outside the BBC," he said.James, one of six guest editors in what has become an end of year tradition for Today, was made a life peer in 1991 and sits on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords. She has written more than 20 books, many of which feature her most famous creation, detective Adam Dalgliesh, and was a governor of the BBC between 1988 and 1993.Today presenter Evan Davis was clearly impressed. "She shouldn't be guest editing, she should be permanently presenting the programme," he said. "Very interesting indeed."• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".Mark ThompsonBBCRadio 4Public service broadcastingTelevision industryRadio industryPD JamesJohn Plunkettguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
My hero Sebastian Walker by Julie Myerson I started working as Walker Books' publicist in 1988. Less than a month into the job – not great timing – I found I was pregnant. But Sebastian's face lit up. "My dear, I'll start a nursery. You can bring the baby into work with you!"Sebastian started Walker Books because he wanted to make beautiful and exciting books for children, so it was funny and touching that he knew so little about babies. He imagined the nursery could just be a line of carrycots – until someone reminded him that children tend to grow. But his generosity and imagination were entirely genuine. Just like the lunches we all ate together, the Walker nursery was absolutely free.Sebastian's vision and energy were unique and infectious. He cared deeply about music, art, authors, artists. He cared about his staff. Late one night, he walked around putting a memo on every desk which declared that from now on, Walker Books would be a cigarette-free zone. Such an impulse was way ahead of its time, but quite simply he didn't want his friends and colleagues to die.When Sebastian discovered he was terminally ill, he ensured the company couldn't be taken over, by giving it to its authors, artists and staff. He quipped to me that it was just "in case I go under the proverbial bus", and I remember laughing because no person I knew seemed more alive, more present, less likely to die.I was too shy of him ever to know him well, but he transformed my life, made my early years as a mother relaxed and happy and secure. And I'm surprised to find I think of him more, not less, as the years pass and I miss him – his lively face, those white linen shirts, his complete lack of small talk, the odd mix of comfort and discomfort that was probably just shyness, the grand gestures that were so creative, so awe-inspiring. I would have loved to see what he did with the rest of his life, and maybe even to have dared be his friend.Children and teenagersJulie Myersonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |