Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry

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Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can. Childhood: This theme is brought into the poem through the ideas of transition away from childhood, while still retaining some imagery in the poem such as the physical descriptions of the girls. Bright Dead Things is organized into four untitled sections, the first of which opens with “How to Triumph Like a Girl,” which sets the tone for the collection to come—we will be in motion, we will wander, and we will not skirt genuine feeling in favor of irony. “I like the lady horses best, / how they make it all look easy, / like running 40 miles per hour / is as easy as taking a nap, or grass,” she writes. The speaker of the poem admits that she likes the horses mainly because they’re ladies, which means she might share something elemental with them. It means “that somewhere inside the delicate / skin of my body, there pumps / an 8-pound female horse heart.” This is a book that will not hesitate to talk about heart, to name that heart. The Forwards are among the world’s most coveted poetry honours. They are awarded annually for the Best Collection, Best First Collection and Best Single Poem published in Britain and Ireland and are recognised for bringing together familiar names and exciting new talent.

Compare the way death is presented in ‘On Her Blindness’ by Adam Thorpe and ‘Effects’ by Alan Jenkins. speaker/perspective - why have they chosen this speaker - what is the value in their perspective - what is the purpose, what EFFECT does it have on reader The Forwards are among the world’s most coveted poetry honours. They have been awarded annually since 1992 for the Best Collection, Best First Collection and Best Single Poem published in Britain and Ireland, and the roster of winning, shortlisted and highly commended poets regularly juxtaposes familiar canonical names with fresh voices. As mentioned, the range of punctuation in ‘An Easy Passage’ is interesting because there are many hyphens, commas and semi colons used. This is to be expected for the longer sentences, as many of these examples could be seen as replacing full stops and full caesura so as to not break the continuous feel of the poem. Notably, there is the combination of both a full stop and a hyphen mid way through the poem at “on her thighs. – What can” which helps to add an extended and distinctive pause, further supporting the idea that the middle of the poem helps to act as a transition point in the narrative through the use of structure. Poetic Techniques Last year, in an interview with Krista Tippett of On Being, Tracy K. Smith described the act of writing poetry as perpetually, and necessarily, expansive:The very rigid form of the poem helps to represent the strict regime imposed by the feeder, and how it has become commonplace. There are a total of ten tercet stanzas, which adds to the overall regimented mood. In addition, there is assonance between the final words on the first and third lines of each stanza, such as “cake” and “weight”, with an alternative form of assonance in each line which breaks from the traditional idea of using rhyme. This is a very interesting rhyme scheme for a reader because it enables variety of language while still maintaining a sense of conformity and expectations, potentially echoing the expectations of the feeder.

This anthology of anthologies draws on the ten Forward Books of Poetry published to accompany the prizes between 2001 and 2010. Agbabi, Armitage, Burnside, Duffy, Dunmore, Fanthorpe, Heaney, Motion, Nagra, O'Brien and more. Poems of the Decade brings together more than one hundred poems from the many thousands submitted to the Forward Prizes for Poetry in the first decade of the 21st century. The Forwards are among the world's most coveted poetry honours. They have been awarded annually since 1992 for the Best Collection, Best First Collection and Best Single Poem published in Britain and Ireland, and the roster of winning, shortlisted and highly commended poets regularly juxtaposes familiar canonical names with fresh voices. This anthology of anthologies draws on the ten Forward Books of Poetry published to accompany the prizes between 2001 and 2010. It is the perfect introduction to a wide range of contemporary poetry: works that speak of violence, danger and fear, of love and all that opposes love, in forms of language broken and reshaped by the need to communicate what it is to be alive now, here. These annual anthologies of the poems in the running for the Forward Prizes remain the best way of encountering the richness that new poetry has to offer. (Daily Telegraph) A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard). Trying to write about this collection is a completely hopeless exercise for me. Everything I want to say about it sounds at least a little unhinged, as in: having read it, I can’t imagine not having read it; a copy of it never lasts long with me before I give it away to someone I love; it offers moments of clarity that I’ve never found anywhere else. So many of us have a book for which this is the case, and often—unsurprisingly often—this book was written by Carl Phillips.Caroline Bird, Malika Booker, Mary Jean Chen, Tishani Doshi, Will Harris, Stephen Sexton, Danez Smith, Kae Tempest and more Various poetic devices are used throughout ‘Eat Me’, one of the more common ones being alliteration. A key example is “bigger the better” and “broad belly wobble”, both of which help to reaffirm the idea of obesity and being overweight, and even have a ‘wobbly’ nature to the sound. This is further emphasised through the repetition of ‘fat’ throughout the poem, helping to ensure that this idea is never far from the reader’s thoughts, particularly in the seventh stanza. The forceful yet resentful tone of this stanza is particularly noticeable because of the way that the pace is increased. Use these questions to practice your essential essay writing skills, and consolidate your understanding of individual prescribed poems. The ambition of Coste Lewis’s project is revealed in the precision of its limitations, as described in the first sentence of the prologue: Use these questions to practice integrating comparison into essays, and strengthen your understanding of the prescribed poems, or as AS Level practice questions.

MAIN BODY: disagree - the poets come to a point of disagreement in their portrayals of how - in poem A, - on the other hand, poet B adopts a more - yet the reader becomes increasingly awareThere are also consistent end-stopped lines on the final line of each stanza (although again with the exception of stanza six), which reinforce the idea of routine and consistency. However, there is also a slight break in this structure too with the final two lines of the last stanza both ending with full stops, which signifies the death of the man, and by extension, the relationship. This helps to make the poem more dramatic, and also bring a sense of unease to the reader through the way in which the expected pattern and rhythm has been disrupted. Poetic Techniques Poems of the Decade is a collection of poems from the first decade of the 21st century, published by the Forward Poetry Foundation. A selection of 20 of these poems has been chosen by Edexcel for the Poetry paper of the A Level specification. It is the perfect introduction to a wide range of contemporary poetry: works that speak of violence, danger and fear, of love and all that opposes love, in forms of language broken and reshaped by the need to communicate what it is to be alive now, here.