Robyn Marsack: Putting Together the Oxford Poets 2013 Anthology

Robyn Marsack is Director of the Scottish Poetry Library and co-editor of
Oxford Poets 2013: An Anthology

Putting together Oxford Poets 2013 was like being let loose in a garden for a year: so many varieties to choose from, blooming in their different soils and seasons.

Iain Galbraith and I both had experience with national anthologies. He had recently compiled a representation of Scottish poetry for a German-speaking audience, and I had co-edited an anthology of contemporary New Zealand poetry. But here we weren’t bound by nation, or theme, or even language, a freedom that sometimes made us dizzy with possibility.

Some poems came in marked specifically for consideration for the anthology; some poets whom we knew were between collections were invited to send poems; we brought to each other’s attention work from magazines, poets heard at readings.

Oxford Poets 2013: An Anthology

In the end, with much emailing to and fro, and a meeting – Iain lives in Germany and I live in Scotland – and consulting with our fellow Oxford Poets editor Jeremy Noel-Tod (immersed in his own vast compilation task), we settled on nineteen poets from a dozen countries writing from at least seven languages. Classic texts provide extraordinary resources: Anna Karenina is a temporary shelter from the Christchurch earthquake of 2010 and its consequences in a prose poem by Lynn Jenner; the Ramayana is ‘reanimated’ as poem rather than story in the electric versions by Vivek Narayanan. We found, after all, some common themes: migration, memory, myth among them. We were excited by the formal variety these poets offered.

In a way – changing similes – the anthology is like a poetry festival: known names alongside unknown, and curious readers can sample both. The introductory pieces by each poet are akin to the introductions at a reading – not too long, though! – and prompt reflections on the nature of poetry as well as on personal impetus: ‘I feel poetry and biography sit well together, as poems and lives are each sustained by breath’, writes Christy Ducker, prefacing excerpts from Grace Darling’s Journal; ‘writing a poem is usually a process of making my way somewhere I can’t get to using normal navigational instruments like thought or conversation’, Leonie Rushforth declares. And Jan Wagner sums up: ‘A good poem can pool the maximum of linguistic resources in the smallest of fields… granting the greatest possible freedom in the most compact space.’

We hope that readers will find much to please, surprise and pique their interest in Oxford Poets 2013.



Robyn Marsack is Director of the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. With Ken Cockburn, she co-edited the anthology Intimate Expanses: XXV Scottish Poems 1978–2002 (SPL/Carcanet, 2004), and with Andrew Johnston, Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets (Carcanet, 2009). She lives in Glasgow.

Oxford Poets 2013: An Anthology is available now in paperback, and the ebook will be published at the end of the month - search your preferred ebook store.

Launch event: you are invited to the launch of Oxford Poets 2013 at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford on 4th July! Click here for more information.

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Every week on the blog, we'll be offering 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors. The book(s) on offer will change each week, so watch this space!

This week, it's Oxford Poets 2013: An Anthology, which is part of our month-long Anthologies Sale at www.carcanet.co.uk!