Читать книгу A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015 - Группа авторов - Страница 41

Any analysis of the institutions at work in the field of British and Irish poetry (original and translated), which allows itself to be seduced by the attractions of comprehensiveness and representative quality, must be doomed to failure. The extent and degree of detail called for would involve the writer in a project of encyclopedic dimensions, such as could provide occupation for an army of academics and experts for whole years to come. Consequently, the account offered here of the fields and subfields of British and Irish poetry, while it certainly does not ignore what is characteristic and tries to be as complete as possible, does not make the mistake of sanctifying as “representative” any and every feature that can be identified, discussed, and documented; working within limits, it tries to achieve a consistent and coherent picture; it looks at various institutions like the “little magazines,” poetry publishing in general, the system of awards and prizes meant to encourage poetry, and tries to describe the character of their operation and effects on British and Irish poetry, including, as an integral aspect, the translated poetry published in Britain and Ireland. My selection of institutions (and the picture I have produced) must be to a degree subjective, but I have worked on the basis of criteria that would be generally recognized and am convinced that I have focused on factors and elements of crucial importance to the production of poetry in Britain and Ireland. What is perhaps important that I think I have introduced the reader to a landscape of poetry well worth knowing: pulsing with life, maintaining itself with resource amid the usual discouragements and high hopes, and characterized by an interesting variety of magazines, publishers, policies of publishing, as well as theories and trends in the practice of poetry.