From daring contemporary collections to the long-awaited definitive edition from one of the major poets of the 20th century, this is our pick of the best poetry books of the year. Whether you’re a budding poet or you’re looking for the perfect gift for the bookworm in your life, these are the releases worth reading from cover to cover.
The Book of Jonah, by Luke Kennard
Luke Kennard “daringly” remixes his “source material and inspirations” in his latest collection, said The Guardian. The acclaimed British poet moves Jonah, the “minor prophet out of the Bible into a world of arts conferences, where he is continually reminded that his presence everywhere is mostly futile”. Each section of the collection starts with a “lecture where this Jonah tries to justify his action, or lack thereof”, said The Telegraph. Poems that initially appear lengthy and opaque are “made welcoming with an irresistible energy”. At times, it feels like you’re being “regaled by a tipsy professor of theology in a pub, whose riffing gets wilder and wilder until they fall off their stool”. Filled with poems that will leave you “both smiling and wincing”, it’s a “brilliant” collection.
The Poems of Seamus Heaney
It’s been 12 years since Seamus Heaney died and the “project to produce a definitive collection of his poetry is complete”, said the Financial Times. The main draw is the “substantial amount of previously uncollected and unpublished work” which has been pulled together in chronological order. This will no doubt “sharpen our curiosity” about why these words by the great Irish poet were originally left out. “A treat for Heaney completists.”
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Southernmost: Sonnets, by Leo Boix
“The sonnet sequence may seem as unlikely a 21st-century cultural force as the altarpiece triptych or the harpsichord concerto,” said The Telegraph. “But it’s alive and sparkling”. Argentinian-British poet Leo Boix’s second collection comprises 100 sonnets covering everything from “religion and upbringing” to “love and sexuality”. His latest book is “unflinching in its attention to Argentine history”; Boix includes “lively anecdotes” about his family, alongside a “reckoning with the long shadow of colonialism”. And his poems about his relationship with his husband, Pablo, are both “beautiful” and “unsentimental”, charting the “rhythms and negotiations of a real partnership”.
Chaotic Good, by Isabelle Baafi
This “playful and sharp” examination of escaping a toxic marriage is a must-read, said The Guardian. Delving into the erosion of identity and how we manage to find ourselves again, Isabelle Baafi’s collection is filled with poems that “absolutely know their power and revel in it”. Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and winner of the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, it’s a piercing debut that will stay with you long after the final page.
The Empire of Forgetting, by John Burnside
The late John Burnside “conveyed an infectious love of the world”, which is “heightened” in his posthumous collection, said the Financial Times. “His laser-sharp eye for the beauty of nature, strands of memory both personal and literary, and an undeniable sense of an ending, together take on a spiritual dimension.” This is a moving, personal collection which confronts mortality, drawing on Burnside’s own health issues and brushes with death.
Lode, by Gillian Allnutt
“Gillian Allnutt may be the best living British poet you’ve never heard of,” said The Telegraph. Her work “dwells in the overlooked and the austere”, often examining her family connections and the lives of women throughout history. Her tenth collection opens with a reflection on her visit to Buckingham Palace, where she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2016. Later, she “revisits the death of her mother’s brother”, an RAF navigator who was shot down in 1943, ending the poem with the line “‘You’d have liked him,’ she said to me / often. I think I would have done.” This is Allnutt at her best: “plain speech made devastating”.
