Pigeonholing the poets

Fiona Sampson has produced a vigorous and valuable guide to ‘the diversity and eclecticism’ of present-day British poetry. It isn’t a book for beginners but for those broadly acquainted, at the very least, with the work and influence of important poets of the last century — W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin — and perhaps rather confused and unclear about what is happening now.

Sampson herself is a notable poet, critic and editor who enjoys and admires a wide range of contemporary poetry, and Beyond the Lyric should assist any intelligent readers infected by her enthusiasms and wanting to update their knowledge.

Her title makes a reasonable assumption: that for many people, poets and readers alike, poetry essentially still means lyric poetry. She sorts current poets into 13 groups, of which three relate to this notion.

There are ‘the Touchstone Lyricists’, who write shortish, very personal poems and continue ‘in search of a universal register of Beauty and Truth’.