On Pleasure

Volume 97, No 4, Winter 2007/8

Editor: Fiona Sampson

The winter issue of Poetry Review, On Pleasure, is a goody-box of delights: contemporary libretti, including a sneak preview of The Minotaur,  libretto by David Harsent and music by Harrison Birtwistle which is to premiere at the Royal Opera House in April 2008; an exceptional series of haiku-strips and a letter from the Romanian Cultural attache in Paris.

Ben Knight talked to Fiona Sampson about the latest issue...

  

 

Poems

Mahmoud Darwish, Tuesday And The Weather Is Clear
Martin Harrison, The Dam
David Krump, How Prometheus Made It Through The Checkpoint Of The Gods
Allison Funk, The Virgin And The Animals
Siriol Troup, About Suffering
Hugo Williams, And God Created Woman, Gentleman Jim, You Have To Laugh
Lavinia Greenlaw, Winter Finding (Maeshowe, Fal Estuary, Blakeney Point, Severn)
Sean O’Brien, Jeudi Prochain
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, The Fall, 1983
Ruth Fainlight, Their Story
Neil Rollinson, Ancestors
Alan Jenkins, The Sporting Life
Penelope Shuttle, 1923, The Search
David Wheatley, In Memoriam György Ligeti
Christopher Wallace-Crabbe, Air
Edip Cansever, Sweet Reality
Matthew Sweeney, Lavigny
Jane Draycott, Picnic
Matthew Welton, Poem #2
Vona Groarke, The Clutch Handbag
Lev Loseff, [Untitled]
Margo Berdeshevsky, Not A Land Where Oranges
Wayne Burrows, The Blue Wolves And The Wheelbarrow
Tom Gilliver, from Vita e Bela
Helen Farish, Kit
Paul Henry, The Distance Of Rooms
Tishani Doshi, Another Man’s Woman
Martha Kapos, The Conquest Of Loveless Hill

Centrefold

Peter Blegvad, A View Of My Favourite Things 2
Poetry Into Libretto
Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent: The Minotaur
James MacMillan and Michael Symmonds Roberts The Sacrifice
Charles Tomlinson at Brook Cottage interviewed by Julian Stannard
Haiku-Strip

Reviews

Steven Matthews on Sean O’Brien’s Forward Prize-winning collection
David Morley on Adam Thorpe and Mimi Khalvati
Sarah Crown on contrasting collections from David Morley and Neil Rollinson
W.N.Herbert on Nick Laird, Sean Lysaght and Matthew Sweeney
Adam Thorpe on three American poets
Alison Brackenbury on Anthony Thwaite’s Collected Poems
Giles Goodland on John Ash, David Wheatley, Chris Greenhalgh, Ian Duhig
Peter Barry on the legacy of the British Poetry Revival
Roger Caldwell on Annie Freud, Joanne Limburg, Nick Drake, Susan Wicks and Andrew Waterman
Sarah Wardle on James Berry, Jack Mapanje, Suzanne Batty and Robert Saxton 

Endpapers

Ben Hickman, Personal
Editorial
Magda Carneci, Letter from Bucharest in Paris
Letters to the Editor
Contributors