Agenda is a literary journal published in London and founded by William Cookson

William Cookson

William Cookson was a British poet, writer on poetry and literary editor, best-known for his influential poetry magazine Agenda....

. Agenda Editions is an imprint of the journal operating as a small press

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

.

History and editorial orientation

Agenda was started in 1959

1959 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* In the United States, "Those serious new Bohemians, the beatniks, occupied with reading their deliberately undisciplined, protesting verse in night clubs and hotel ballrooms, created more publicity...

, after Cookson had met Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 in Italy the previous year. Pound had originally suggested that Cookson edit pages in an existing publication, but when these plans did not come to fruition, the bookseller and poet Peter Russell

Peter Russell (poet)

Irwin Peter Russell was a British poet, translator and critic. He spent the first half of his life—apart from war service—based in Kent and London, being the proprietor of a series of bookshops, editing the influential literary magazine Nine and being part of the literary scene...

 suggested that Cookson found his own magazine. Agenda was edited with Peter Dale and then Patricia McCarthy, who continues to edit the journal following Cookson's death in 2003.

The editorial preoccupations of Agenda reflected Cookson's own passions. The journal continued to champion Pound long after the poet's death. A "Special Issue in Honour of Ezra Pound's Eighty-Fifth Birthday" (Vol. 8 Nos. 3-4) was a significant early issue of the journal in 1970, and a special issue on "Dante, Ezra Pound and Contemporary Poetry" (Vol. 34 Nos. 3-4) was published as late as 1996.

Cookson also used Agenda to promote the reputation of David Jones

David Jones (poet)

David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...

, devoting two major special issues to him (in 1967 and 1974) in addition to articles in several other issues. Agenda Editions published several major Jones volumes. These included The Kensington Mass (1975, published with a photographic reproduction of the manuscript) and The Roman Quarry (1981), a full-length volume of until then unpublished material. Agenda Editions published volumes of Jones's letters in 1979 and 1996.

Agenda is also notable for its focus upon the art of translation. Recent issues include "Translation as Metamorphosis" in 2005 (Vol. 4, No. 4).

Agenda: An Anthology 1959-1993 (1994)

Poets, translators and reviewers included were:

Michael Alexander

Michael Alexander

Michael Charles Alexander was a British Army officer, a German Prisoner of War held captive at Oflag IV-C, and later a writer....

 - W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

 - Jonathan Barker - John Bayley - William Bedford

William Bedford

William Bedford is a retired American professional basketball player who was selected by the Phoenix Suns in the 1st round of the 1986 NBA Draft after playing at Memphis State University...

 - Anne Beresford - Heather Buck - Basil Bunting

Basil Bunting

Basil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...

 - Stanley Burnshaw

Stanley Burnshaw

Stanley Burnshaw was an influential American poet, primarily known for his ontology, The Seamless Web . His style was particularly writing political poems, prose, editorials, etc...

 - John Cayley - Humphrey Clucas

Humphrey Clucas

Humphrey Clucas is a British composer, singer and author.Clucas read English at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar...

 - William Cookson - Arthur Cooper - Peter Dale - Donald Davie

Donald Davie

Donald Alfred Davie was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes.-Biography:...

 - Peter Dent

Peter Dent

Peter Dent is an innovative English poet born in Forest Gate, London, in 1938. He was also the managing editor of Interim Press between 1975-87.-Bibliography:*Proxima Centauri London, 1972...

 - Ronald Duncan

Ronald Duncan

Ronald Duncan was a writer, poet and playwright, now best known for preparing the libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia, first performed in 1946....

 - T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

 - Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...

 - Donald Hall

Donald Hall

Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...

 - Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger OBE was a noted British translator, poet, critic, memoirist, and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism...

 - Ian Hamilton

Ian Hamilton (critic)

Robert Ian Hamilton was a British literary critic, reviewer, biographer, poet, magazine editor and publisher....

 - Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

 - David Heidenstam - A. L. Hendriks

A. L. Hendriks

Arthur Lemiere Hendriks was a Jamaican poet, writer, and broadcasting director . He was born in 1922 in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Jamaican father and a French mother. He was father to five daughters and two sons. Mr...

 - Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...

 - Peter Jay

Peter Jay

Peter Jay is a British economist, broadcaster and diplomat.-Background:Peter Jay is the son of Douglas and Peggy Jay, both of whom were Labour Party politicians...

 - Roland John - David Jones

David Jones (poet)

David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...

 - Peter Levi

Peter Levi

Peter Chad Tigar Levi, FSA, FRSL, , Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford was a poet, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest, travel writer, biographer, academic and prolific reviewer and critic.-Early life and education:Levi was born in Ruislip, Middlesex of parents with Mediterranean...

 - Saunders Lewis

Saunders Lewis

Saunders Lewis was a Welsh poet, dramatist, historian, literary critic, and political activist. He was a prominent Welsh nationalist and a founder of the Welsh National Party...

 - Eddie Linden - Edward Lowbury

Edward Lowbury

Edward Joseph Lister Lowbury was a pioneering and innovative English medical bacteriologist and pathologist, and also a published poet.-Life:...

 - Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...

 - Patricia McCarthy - Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

- Seán Mac Falls

Seán Mac Falls

Seán Mac Falls is an Irish poet.Belonging to no group or movement and operating outside of literary fashions, his brand of symbolist poetry can, at first reading, appear difficult. His use of allusion, startling diction and subtle punning display submerged metaphor in his work...

 - Jean MacVean - Eve Machin - Sylvia Mann - Virginia Maskell

Virginia Maskell

Virginia Elizabeth Maskell , was an English actress.- Biography :After the outbreak of World War II, Maskell's family were evacuated to South Africa...

 - Alan Massey

Alan Massey

Vice Admiral Sir Alan Michael Massey, KCB, CBE is a former senior officer in the Royal Navy who served as the Second Sea Lord.-Naval career:...

 - Ruth Mead - Matthew Mead

Matthew Mead

Matthew Mead is an English poet. He edited the magazine Satis and now lives in Germany. A selection of his poems appears in Penguin Modern Poets 16, together with Harry Guest and Jack Beeching....

 - Moelwyn Merchant

Moelwyn Merchant

William Moelwyn Merchant , was an academic, novelist, sculptor, poet and Anglican priest. He was born in Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales and his first language was Welsh. He was educated at University College, Cardiff...

 - W. S. Milne - Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...

 - George Oppen

George Oppen

George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...

 - Alan Neame - Penelope Palmer - Rachel Pelham Burn - Stuart Piggott - Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 - Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...

 - Norman Rea - Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking.-Biography:...

 - David Rokeah - Peter Russell

Peter Russell (poet)

Irwin Peter Russell was a British poet, translator and critic. He spent the first half of his life—apart from war service—based in Kent and London, being the proprietor of a series of bookshops, editing the influential literary magazine Nine and being part of the literary scene...

 - N. K. Sandars - Tom Scott

Tom Scott (poet)

Tom Scott was a Scottish poet, editor, and prose writer. His writing is closely tied to the New Apocalypse, the New Romantics, and the Scottish Renaissance.- Bibliography :...

 - C. H. Sisson

C. H. Sisson

Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

 - W. D. Snodgrass - Henry Swabey - R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas

Ronald Stuart Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman, noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales...

 - Charles Tomlinson

Charles Tomlinson

Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE is a British poet and translator, and also an academic and artist. He was born and raised in Penkhull in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.-Life:...

 - Peter Whigham

Peter Whigham

Peter George Whigham was an English poet and translator, widely known for his translation of the poems of Catullus published by Penguin Books in 1966.Whigham was born in Oxford in 1925, and was largely self-educated...

 - Julie Whitby - William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

 - Caroline Wright - Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...