A Poetry Boom 1990-2010

The figures we have tell that the number of new books of poetry published each year nearly doubled between 1976 and 1993 and then nearly doubled again by 2000, then staying at this level. In the years 1999-2001 roughly as many books of poetry were published as in the whole of the 1970s. This is a poetry boom. We seem to have a situation where there are 100,000 Eng Lit graduates and 10,000 write a book of poems and succeed in getting it published. (Andrew Duncan)

The third of Andrew Duncan's surveys of 20th-century British poetry from Shearsman Books-there are also volumes from Salt and from Liverpool University Press-and as idiosyncratic and as fascinating as the previous volumes. This volume covers the most recent period in our poetry, and pays special attention to recent anthologies as maps of the terrain, recent critical surveys of the scene, and to the work of a range of poets, from Claire Pollard to Emily Critchley, and from Pauline Stainer to B. Catling.