Bloodaxe Books - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bloodaxe Books is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

publishing house specialising in poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

History

It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

by Neil Astley

Neil Astley

Neil Astley is a British publisher, editor and writer.-Life and work:Astley grew up in Fareham, Hampshire, and was educated at Price's School, Fareham , the Alliance Française, Paris , and Newcastle University...

, who is still editor and managing director. Joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk, Astley was later awarded an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University in 1995 for his work with Bloodaxe Books. The publishing house moved its editorial office to Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

and its sales office to Bala, North Wales, in 1997.

As well as publishing famous names in literature from all over the world, Bloodaxe has discovered and helped establish the reputations of many of Britain’s most promising new writers. It has published nearly 1000 books by more than 300 writers, with an annual output of around 30 new titles. The Bloodaxe list has more women poets than any other British publisher and the most substantial list of Caribbean and Black British poets. With its diverse stable of new and established British, Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an and Commonwealth of Nations

Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

writers, Bloodaxe has revolutionised poetry publishing in Britain.

Bloodaxe authors have won virtually every major literary award for which poetry is eligible, including four Nobel Prizes. It is also typical of the broad editorial policy that Bloodaxe has published a great many signiﬁcant but little-known European poets, alongside the more familiar names. As well as Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

, Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

, Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...

, Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...

, Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from...

. Edith Södergran

Edith Södergran

Edith Irene Södergran was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet. She was one of the first modernists within Swedish-language literature and her influences came from French Symbolism, German expressionism and Russian futurism. At the age of 24 she released her first collection of poetry entitled Dikter...

and Miroslav Holub

Miroslav Holub

Miroslav Holub was a Czech poet and immunologist.Miroslav Holub's work was heavily influenced by his experiences as an Immunologist, writing many poems using his scientific knowledge to poetic effect. His work is almost always unrhymed, so lends itself easily to translation...

(to name but a few), Bloodaxe has published, among many others, Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger , is a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He has also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr. He lives in Munich.- Life :...

, Piotr Sommer, Marin Sorescu

Marin Sorescu

- Biography :Born to a family of farmworkers in Bulzeşti, Dolj County, Sorescu graduated from the primary school in his home village. After that he went to the Buzesti Brothers High School in Craiova, after which he was transferred to the Predeal Military School. His final education was at the...

, Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been translated into over 60 languages. Tranströmer is acclaimed as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since the Second World War...

, Miguel Hernández

Miguel Hernández

Miguel Hernández Gilabert was a 20th century Spanish poet and playwright.-Biography:Hernández was born in Orihuela, in the Valencian Community, to a poor family and received little formal education; he published his first book of poetry at 23, and gained considerable fame before his death...

, Attila József

Attila József

Attila József was one of the most important and well-known Hungarian poets of the 20th century.-Biography:The son of Áron József, a soap factory worker of Romanian origin from Bánát, and Hungarian peasant girl Borbála Pőcze, he was born in Ferencváros, a poor district of Budapest. He had two elder...

, Jaan Kaplinski

Jaan Kaplinski

Jaan Kaplinski is an Estonian poet, philosopher, and culture critic. Kaplinski is known for his independent mind, focus on global issues and support for left-wing/liberal thinking...

, Tua Forsström

Tua Forsström

Tua Forsström is a Finnish writer who writes in Swedish. She was awarded the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1998 for the poetry collection Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar....

, Pia Tafdrup

Pia Tafdrup

Pia Tafdrup is a Danish writer; primarily a poet, she has also written a novel and two plays, as well as works for radio....

and Tomas Venclova

Tomas Venclova

Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian scholar, poet, author and translator of literature.Tomas Venclova is son of poet and Soviet politician Antanas Venclova. He was educated at Vilnius University. As an active participant in the dissident movement he was deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1977 and had...

, as well as leading poets from other parts of the world, such as Maram al-Massri (Syria), Salah Stétié

Salah Stetie

Salah Stétié is a Lebanese writer and poet who writes in the French language. During the time of his birth, in 1929, Lebanon was a French-protectorate. He has also served in various diplomatic positions for Lebanon in countries such as Morocco and France...

(Lebanon), Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet...

and Taha Muhammad Ali

Taha Muhammad Ali

Taha Muhammad Ali was a Palestinian poet.-Biography:Taha Muhammad Ali fled to Lebanon with his family when he was seventeen after their village came under heavy bombardment during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The following year, he returned to Nazareth, where he lived till his death...

(Palestine), Jack Mapanje

Jack Mapanje

Jack Mapanje is a Malawian writer and poet. He was the former head of English at the University of Malawi, and is currently a senior lecturer in English at Newcastle University.-Works:* Of Chameleons and Gods, 1981...

(Malawi), Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His maternal grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor...

(Indonesia/USA), Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire

Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...

(Martinque), Evgeny Rein, Tatiana Shcherbina, Elena Shvarts

Elena Shvarts

Elena Andreyevna Shvarts was a Russian poet.Born in Leningrad, where she lived her entire life, Shvarts attended the University of Tartu, where her first poems were published in the university newspaper in 1973...

and Tatiana Voltskaia (Russia), Yang Lian

Yang Lian

Yang Lian is a Chinese poet associated with the Misty Poets and also with the Searching for Roots school. He was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1955 and raised in Beijing, where he attended primary school....

and Yi Sha (China), Kenji Miyazawa

Kenji Miyazawa

was a Japanese poet and author of children's literature in the early Shōwa period of Japan. He was also known as a devout Buddhist, vegetarian and social activist.-Early life:...

(Japan), Robert Adamson

Robert Adamson (poet)

Robert Adamson is an Australian poet and publisher.-Biography:Adamson grew up in Neutral Bay and spent much of his teenage years in Gosford Boys Home for juvenile offenders. He discovered poetry while educating himself in Gaol in his 20s. His first book, Canticles on the Skin, was published in 1970...

and Kevin Hart (Australia), and Alden Nowlan

Alden Nowlan

Alden Albert Nowlan was a critically acclaimed Canadian poet, novelist, and playwright-History:Alden Nowlan was born into rural poverty in Stanley, Nova Scotia, adjacent to Mosherville, and close to the small town of Windsor, Nova Scotia, along a stretch of dirt road that he would later refer to...

and Priscila Uppal (Canada).

Bloodaxe’s American list includes Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander (poet)

Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, essayist, playwright, and a university professor.-Early life:Alexander was born in Harlem, New York City and grew up in Washington D.C. She is the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman...

, Sarah Arvio, Dan Chiasson

Dan Chiasson

-Life:He graduated from Amherst College and Harvard University, with a Ph.D in English.He is currently an associate professor at Wellesley College. He lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts....

, Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate.-Life:Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 28, 1950, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a B.A...

, Tess Gallagher

Tess Gallagher

Tess Gallagher is an American poet, essayist, author and playwright. She attended the University of Washington, where she studied creative writing with Theodore Roethke and later Nelson Bentley as well as David Wagoner and Mark Strand...

, Deborah Garrison

Deborah Garrison

-Life:Garrison was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her father, Joel Gotlieb, died when she was fourteen, and she and her two sisters were raised by their mother Naomi Weisberg Harrison, an accountant. Garrison earned her bachelor's degree in creative writing from Brown University in 1986. She...

, Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert

-Life and career:Born and raised in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhood of East Liberty, he attended Peabody High School then worked as a door-to-door salesman, an exterminator, and a steelworker...

, Ellen Hinsey

Ellen Hinsey

-Life and work:Ellen Hinsey was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. For the last two decades she has lived in Europe. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University and a graduate degree from Université de Paris VII...

, Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland

Anthony Dey Hoagland is an American poet and writer. His poetry collection 2003, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and a...

, Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield is an American poet.-Biography:Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City and received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University in the school's first graduating class to include women. She later studied at the San Francisco Zen Center, including three years of monastic...

, Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant.-Life:...

, Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...

, Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov

-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...

, Philip Levine

Philip Levine (poet)

Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...

, Samuel Menashe

Samuel Menashe

Samuel Menashe was an American poet. Born in New York City as Samuel Menashe Weisberg, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Menashe grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, and graduated from Townsend Harris High School and Queens College. During World War II he served in the US Army infantry, and in...

, W.S. Merwin, Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home.-Career:...

, Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's [America's] best-selling poet".-Early life:...

, Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Gjertrud Schnackenberg is an American poet.-Life:Schnackenberg graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1975. She lectured at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University, and was Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and visiting fellow at St...

, Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone was an American poet, author, and teacher.-Life and career:In 1959, after her husband, professor Walter Stone, committed suicide, she was forced to raise three daughters alone...

, Brian Turner (American poet)

Brian Turner (American poet)

Brian Turner is an American poet, essayist, and professor. He won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War...

, Chase Twichell

Chase Twichell

Chase Twichell is an American poet, professor, and publisher, the founder in 1999, of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, which earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award....

, Fred Voss, C.K. Williams, C.D. Wright and James Wright

James Wright (poet)

James Arlington Wright was an American poet.Wright first emerged on the literary scene in 1956 with The Green Wall, a collection of formalist verse that was awarded the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. But by the early 1960s, Wright, increasingly influenced by the Spanish language...

, along with UK and Irish resident American writers Julie O'Callaghan, Anne Rouse

Anne Rouse

Anne Barrett Rouse is an American-British poet. Along with Michael Donaghy and Eva Salzman, she has been cited as a noted American-British contributor to contemporary British poetry.-Biography:...

, Eva Salzman

Eva Salzman

Eva Salzman is a noted contemporary American poet.Eva Salzman was born in 1960 in New York City, and grew up in Brooklyn where – from the age of 10 until 22 – she was a dancer and later a choreographer. She was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University, moving to Britain in 1985...

and Anne Stevenson

Anne Stevenson

Anne Stevenson is an American-British poet and writer.-Life:Stevenson's parents Louise Destler Stevenson and C.L. Stevenson met at a Cincinnati High School. They were living in Cambridge, England, where Charles was studying philosophy under I. A. Richards and Wittgenstein, when their first...

. The Bloodaxe list of bilingual editions of French poets includes volumes by Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....

, René Char

René Char

René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...

, Jacques Dupin

Jacques Dupin

Jacques Dupin is a French poet, art critic, and co-founder of the journal L'éphemère.A resident of Paris since 1944, he is director of publication at Galerie Maeght.- Jacques Dupin's poetry in English :...

, Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

, André Frénaud, Guillevic, Philippe Jaccottet

Philippe Jaccottet

Philippe Jaccottet is a poet and translator who publishes in French.After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived several years in Paris. In 1953, came to live in the town of Grignan in Provence...

, Gérard Macé, Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...

, Pierre Reverdy

Pierre Reverdy

Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...

and Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

.

Over 30 years Bloodaxe has become a pioneering publisher of European poetry while at the same time giving a platform to the best new work from Britain and Ireland. After giving ﬁrst publication to poets such as Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...

, David Constantine

David Constantine

David Constantine is a British poet and translator.Constantine is a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford University, and a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford. He is co-editor of the literary journal Modern Poetry in Translation...

, Peter Didsbury

Peter didsbury

Peter Didsbury is an English poet who was born in Fleetwood, Lancashire but lived most of his life in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire...

, Katie Donovan, Maura Dooley, Ian Duhig

Ian Duhig

-Life:He was the eighth of eleven children born to Irish parents. He graduated from Leeds University.He worked for 15 years with homeless people.He is a writer and teacher of creating writing at various institutions, including the Arvon Foundation....

, Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore is a British poet, novelist and children's writer. Educated at the University of York, she now lives in Bristol....

, Frieda Hughes

Frieda Hughes

Frieda Rebecca Hughes is an English poet and painter. She has published seven children's books and four poetry collections and has had many exhibitions.-Early life:...

, Elizabeth Garrett

Elizabeth Garrett

Elizabeth Garrett is Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Frances R. and John J. Duggan Professor of Law, Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Southern California...

, W.N. Herbert, Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay MBE is a Scottish poet and novelist.-Biography:Jackie Kay was born in Glasgow in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, Jonathan C. Okafor who later became a prominent tropical plant taxonomist...

, Stephen Knight

Stephen Knight (poet)

Stephen Knight is a Welsh poet and writer. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1987 and won the National Poetry Competition in 1992. He won the 2003 TLS/ Blackwells Poetry Competition for ‘The Long Way Home’. His writing deals with disappointment and decay, albeit with a lightness of...

, Gwyneth Lewis

Gwyneth Lewis

Gwyneth Lewis is a Welsh poet, and was the first National Poet for Wales.-Biography:Born into a Welsh speaking family, Lewis's father started teaching her English when her mother went into hospital to give birth to her sister....

, Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell is a British poet.-Early life:Though his parents are Welsh, Maxwell was born and raised in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. He studied English at Worcester College, Oxford. He began an MLitt there, but in 1987 moved to America to study poetry and drama with Derek Walcott at...

, Sean O'Brien

Sean O'Brien (writer)

Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic, playwright. Prizes he has garnered include the Eric Gregory Award , the Somerset Maugham Award , the Cholmondeley Award , the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize...

, David Scott, Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott FRSL, is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.-Career:...

and Pauline Stainer

Pauline Stainer

Pauline Stainer is an acclaimed English poet. She was born in the industrial district of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. She later left the city to attend St Anne's College, Oxford, where she took a degree in English...

, Bloodaxe has gone on to produce début volumes by a later generation of British and Irish poets including Paul Batchelor, Zoë Brigley, Polly Clark, Julia Copus

Julia Copus

Julia Copus is a British poet and radio dramatist.-Career:Copus' books of poetry include The Shuttered Eye , which won her an Eric Gregory Award and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and In Defence of Adultery...

, Nick Drake

Nick Drake

Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...

, Jen Hadfield

Jen Hadfield

Jen Hadfield is an English poet and artist.She won the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place...

, Choman Hardi

Choman Hardi

Choman Hardi , is a contemporary Kurdish poet, translator and painter. She was born in Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1975 her family fled to Iran after the Algiers Accord but returned to Iraq after a general amnesty in 1979. They were forced to move again in 1988 during the Anfal campaign...

(exiled from Kurdistan), Tracey Herd, Matthew Hollis, Joanne Limburg, Roddy Lumsden

Roddy Lumsden

Roddy Lumsden is a Scottish poet, who was born in St Andrews. He has published five collections of poetry, a number of chapbooks and a collection of trivia, as well as editing a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade, among other...

, Esther Morgan, Helen Ivory

Helen Ivory

Helen Ivory is an English poet, tutor and editor.She was born in Luton but has lived in Norwich since 1990. In 1999 she won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors....

, Stephanie Norgate, Caitríona O'Reilly

Caitriona O'Reilly

Caitríona O'Reilly is an Irish poet and critic. She took BA and PhD degrees in Archaeology and English at Trinity College, Dublin, and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her poetry collection, The Nowhere Birds ; she has also held the Harper-Wood Studentship from St John's...

, Leanne O'Sullivan (21 when her book came out), Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard is an English poet and playwright. Born in 1978 and raised in Bolton, Pollard read English at Cambridge University. She published her first collection, The Heavy-Petting Zoo, with Bloodaxe in 1998 aged 19. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2000, and has gone on to write three more...

(just 19 when her book appeared), Sally Read and Sarah Wardle

Sarah Wardle

Sarah Wardle was born in London in 1969, and educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College. She studied Classics at Lincoln College, Oxford and English at Sussex University. She was President of Oxford University Conservative Association during Trinity term, 1989. In 1999, she won the Geoffrey Dearmer...

.

The Bloodaxe list of poets has been strengthened by its acquisition of many highly respected British and Irish poets previously published by other imprints, including Gillian Allnutt

Gillian Allnutt

Gillian Allnutt is an English poet who now lives in Esh Winning, County Durham. Her books Nantucket and the Angel and Lintel were both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2001/02 and 2002/03 she was a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, partly at Newcastle University...

, Connie Bensley, Stewart Conn

Stewart Conn

Stewart Conn is a Scottish poet and playwright, born in Hillhead, Glasgow . His father was a minister Kelvinside Church but the family moved to Kilmarnock, Ayrshire in 1941 when he was five. During the 60s and 70s he worked for the BBC at their offices off Queen Margaret Drive and moved to...

, Freda Downie, Ruth Fainlight

Ruth Fainlight

Ruth Fainlight , is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.-Life and career:Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. She studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton...

, Andrew Greig

Andrew Greig

Andrew Greig is a Scottish writer. He grew up in Anstruther, Fife. He studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and is a former Glasgow University Writing Fellow and Scottish Arts Council Scottish/Canadian Exchange Fellow...

, Philip Gross

Philip Gross

Philip Gross is a poet, novelist and playwright. He was born in Delabole, Cornwall and grew up in Plymouth. He lives in Penarth, South Wales, and was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan in 2004, a position he still holds. He previously taught creative writing at...

, Tony Harrison

Tony Harrison

Tony Harrison is an English poet and playwright. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem V and Fram, as well as his versions of ancient Greek tragedies, including the Oresteia and Hecuba...

, Selima Hill

Selima Hill

-Life:She read at Cambridge University. She was a Fellow at University of Exeter.She lives in Lyme Regis.-Awards:* 1986 Cholmondeley Award* Arvon Poetry Prize* Whitbread Poetry Award* University of East Anglia Writing Fellowship...

, Frances Horovitz

Frances Horovitz

Frances Horovitz was an English poet and broadcaster.-Biography:Frances Horovitz was born in London. She was educated at Bristol University and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. As a reader and presenter for the BBC, she acquired a reputation for care of preparation and quality of...

, Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....

, Jenny Joseph

Jenny Joseph

-Life and career:She was born in Birmingham, and with a scholarship, studied English literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford .Her poems were first published when she was at university in the early 1950s...

, Barry MacSweeney

Barry MacSweeney

Barry MacSweeney was an English poet and journalist.-Life and work:Barry MacSweeney was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. He worked as a professional journalist throughout most of his life...

, Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement...

, Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet. She was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1950. After working in Guyana as a teacher and journalist, she emigrated to the UK in 1977. Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore.Her first...

, J.H. Prynne, Peter Reading

Peter Reading

Peter Reading was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his choice of ugly subject matter, and use of classical metres. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry describes his verse as "strongly anti-romantic, disenchanted and usually satirical"...

, Lawrence Sail

Lawrence Sail

-Biography:Sail was born in London and brought up in Exeter. He studied French and German at Oxford University and subsequently taught for some years in Kenya, before returning to the UK, where he taught at Blundell's School and, later, Exeter School...

, Ken Smith

Ken Smith (poet)

Ken Smith was a British poet.-Life:He was son of a farm labourer, and he had an itinerant childhood...

, R.S. Thomas and Susan Wicks

Susan Wicks

Susan Wicks is a British poet, and novelist.She studied at the University of Hull, University of Sussex. She taught at University College, Dublin, University of Dijon, and the University of Kent....

, as well as the writers who joined Bloodaxe after Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

closed its poetry list: Fleur Adcock

Fleur Adcock

Kareen Fleur Adcock , CNZM, OBE is a poet and an editor of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England.-Life and career:...

, Moniza Alvi

Moniza Alvi

-Life and education:Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She was born to a Pakistani father and a British mother. Her father moved to Hatfield, Hertfordshire in England when she was a few months old. She did not revisit Pakistan until after the publication of her first book of poems - The...

, 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...

, Roy Fisher

Roy Fisher

Roy Fisher is a British poet and jazz pianist. He was one of the first British writers to absorb the poetics of William Carlos Williams and the Black Mountain poets into the British poetic tradition. Fisher was a key precursor of the British Poetry Revival.Fisher was born in Handsworth, Birmingham...

, Carole Satyamurti

Carole Satyamurti

Carole Satyamurti is a British poet, sociologist, and translator.-Life:She grew up in Kent, and lived in North America, Singapore and Uganda....

, Penelope Shuttle

Penelope Shuttle

-Life:Shuttle "left school at 17, completing her first novel when she was 20." Her home is in Falmouth, Cornwall since 1970. She married the poet Peter Redgrove, who died in 2003, and they have a daughter, Zoe...

, Anne Stevenson

Anne Stevenson

and George Szirtes

George Szirtes

George Szirtes is a Hungarian-born British poet, writing in English, as well as a translator from the Hungarian language into English. He has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life.-Life:...

. The Bloodaxe Irish list includes many leading Irish writers, including Rita Ann Higgins

Rita Ann Higgins

-Life:A native of Ballybrit, Galway, Higgins was one of thirteen children in a working-class household. She married in 1973 but following the birth of her second child in 1977, contracted Tuberculosis, forcing her to spend an extended period in a sanatorium,...

, Brendan Kennelly

Brendan Kennelly

Brendan Kennelly is a popular Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. He is now retired and occasionally tours the USA as university lecturer.-Early life:...

and Micheal O'Siadhail

Micheal O'Siadhail

Micheal O'Siadhail is an Irish poet. Among his awards are The Marten Toonder Prize and The Irish American Culture Institute Prize for Literature.-Early life:Micheal O'Siadhail was born into a middle class Dublin family...

. Bloodaxe has also published several authoritative editions of major poets from earlier periods, including John Oldham

John Oldham (poet)

John Oldham was an English satirical poet and translator.-Life and work:Oldham was born in Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire, the son of John Oldham, a non-conformist minister, and grandson of John Oldham the staunch anti-papist rector of Shipton Moyne and before that of Long Newton in Wiltshire...

edited by Ken Robinson (1980), Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...

translated and edited by Ketaki Kushari Dyson (1991/2010), Kenji Miyazawa

Kenji Miyazawa

was a Japanese poet and author of children's literature in the early Shōwa period of Japan. He was also known as a devout Buddhist, vegetarian and social activist.-Early life:...

translated and edited by Roger Pulvers (2007), Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas (poet)

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914...

edited by Edna Longley

Edna Longley

Edna Longley is an Irish literary critic and cultural commentator specialising in modern Irish and British poetry.Now Professor Emerita at Queen's University Belfast, as a lecturer and later Professor of English at Queen's, Longley exerted a significant moderating and enabling influence on the...

, and Bernard Spencer

Bernard Spencer

Charles Bernard Spencer was an English poet, translator, and editor.He was born in Madras, India and educated at Marlborough College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Marlborough he knew John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice; at Oxford Stephen Spender, and he also came across W. H. Auden. He...

edited by Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson (poet)

Peter Robinson is a British poet born in Salford, Lancashire.-Life and career:...

(2011).

The growth of Bloodaxe and other specialist poetry publishers coincided with the emergence of a new generation of British and Irish poets, mostly born in the 50s and early 60s, many first published by these imprints. Twenty of these writers were later tagged New Generation Poets in a promotion organised by the Poetry Society

Poetry Society

The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry".The Society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912...

in 1994, but this particular grouping was artiﬁcial and should not be taken as a critical guide, for it excluded several key ﬁgures from that generation, including Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay

, Ian McMillan, Sean O'Brien

Sean O'Brien (writer)

, Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott

and Matthew Sweeney

Matthew Sweeney

-Life:He graduated from Gormanston College, Polytechnic of North London and University of Freiburg, in 1979.He had residencies at the University of East Anglia, and South Bank Centre.He has lived for many years in London.-Awards:...

. The first anthology to represent this new generation was Bloodaxe’s The New Poetry (1993), edited by Michael Hulse

Michael Hulse

Michael Hulse is an English translator, critic, and poet.-Life and Works:Hulse has translated over sixty books from the German, among them works by Goethe, Rilke, and Jakob Wassermann. He is nowadays most familiar as the translator of three of W. G. Sebald's books: The Emigrants, The Rings of...

, David Kennedy

David Kennedy

David Anthony Kennedy was the fourth of eleven children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy.-Life:...

and David Morley

David Morley (poet)

David Morley is a British poet, critic, anthologist, editor and scientist of partly Romani extraction. His bestselling textbook The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing has been translated into several languages including Arabic...

, which became a school set text. Sean O'Brien

Sean O'Brien (writer)

’s The Deregulated Muse: Essays on Contemporary British & Irish Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 1998) is his account of poetry in the post-war period, from the generation of Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...

and Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes

Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

to the new poets of the 80s and 90s.

As Bloodaxe has grown and expanded its publishing, it has been responsive to the changing literatures of Britain and of other countries. Talented writers have been emerging from all kinds of different backgrounds as Britain has become more culturally and ethnically diverse, and their poetry has evolved in ways which appeal to broader-based audiences. Bloodaxe has published some of the finest writers in the British-Caribbean diaspora – such as John Agard

John Agard

John Agard is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in the United Kingdom.-Background:...

, James Berry

James Berry

James Berry may refer to:*James Berry , English executioner, 1884–1891*James Berry, Puritan leader of Seat Pleasant, Maryland*James Henderson Berry , Governor and U.S...

, Kamau Brathwaite, Jean "Binta" Breeze, Martin Carter

Martin Carter

Martin Wylde Carter was a Guyanese poet, who has been compared in stature to W. B. Yeats and Pablo Neruda, as well as being called "the most Caribbean of Caribbean poets". Of mixed European, East Indian, and African descent, he began publishing in 1950 in Thunder Martin Wylde Carter (June 7,...

, Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar is an author of poetry, novels, and drama.D'Aguiar was born in London. His parents were Guyanese. He spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Guyana. His work has received much, and growing, acclaim. His Bill of Rights, about the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, was a...

, Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson is a UK-based dub poet. He became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Classics series. His poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with renowned British...

, Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols

and Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is an English writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English literature, and was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008....

– as well as E.A. Markham’s landmark Caribbean anthology Hinterland (1989). Its South Asian poets include Moniza Alvi

Moniza Alvi

, Imtiaz Dharker

Imtiaz Dharker

Imtiaz Dharker is a Scottish Muslim, poet, artist and documentary film-maker.- Family and background:She was born in Lahore to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she was less than a year old...

, Arun Kolatkar

Arun Kolatkar

Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar was a poet from Maharashtra, India. Writing in both Marathi and English, his poems found humor in many everyday matters. His poetry had an influence on modern Marathi poets...

and Arundhathi Subramaniam

Arundhathi Subramaniam

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a woman poet and writer and web editor based in Mumbai.Arundhathi Subramaniam has published three collections of poetry: On Cleaning Bookshelves and Where I Live and Where I Live: New & Selected Poems brought out by Bloodaxe Books in 2009...

, with Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet. Born in Kerala, he is best known as a writer, performance poet and musician. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including These Errors Are Correct and English , and is editor of the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets . Educated in Hong Kong, New...

’s Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008) covering 55 years of Indian poetry in English.

One of Bloodaxe’s most significant achievements has been to transform the publishing opportunities for women poets. For many years Bloodaxe has been unusual in having a poetry list which is 50:50 male: female, not the result of positive discrimination except in relation to literary excellence. The first of several influential Bloodaxe anthologies of women poets, Jeni Couzyn’s Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets (1985) was published at a time when very little poetry by women was readily available to readers. Others have included Carol Rumens

Carol Rumens

Carol Rumens FRSL is a British poet.-Life:Carol Rumens was born in Forest Hill, South London. She won a scholarship to grammar school and later studied Philosophy at London University, but left before completing her degree...

’s New Women Poets (1990), Linda France’s Sixty Women Poets (1993), Maura Dooley’s Making for Planet Alice (1997), Robyn Bolam's Eliza's Babes: four centuries of women's poetry in English (2005), and Deryn Rees-Jones

Deryn Rees-Jones

Deryn Rees-Jones is an Anglo Welsh poet, who lives and works in Liverpool. Although, Rees-Jones has spent much of her life in Liverpool, she spent much of her childhood in the family home of Eglwys-bach in North Wales and she thinks of herself as a Welsh writer....

’s Modern Women Poets (2005), published as the companion anthology to her critical study Consorting with Angels (2005).

Irina Ratushinskaya

Irina Ratushinskaya

Irina Borisovna Ratushinskaya is a prominent Russian dissident, poet and writer.Irina was educated at Odessa University, the city of her birth, and was graduated with a Master's Degree in physics in 1976...

’s No, I’m Not Afraid was published by Bloodaxe in May 1986 when the young poet was imprisoned in a Soviet prison camp for the ‘crime’ of writing and distributing poems a judge had called ‘a danger to the state’. At the age of 28, she had been sentenced to seven years’ hard labour. Three years into her sentence, she was in desperate health, unaware that poems smuggled out of the camp had reached the West. As well as translations by David McDuff

David McDuff

David McDuff is a British translator, editor and literary critic.He attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied Russian and German...

, No, I’m Not Afraid included documentary material on her imprisonment provided by Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

, statements by her husband and friends, and extracts from a camp diary charting life in the ‘Small Zone’, the special unit for women prisoners of conscience in Mordovia where she was held. Many of her poems were ﬁrst incised with burnt matchsticks onto bars of soap, and then memorised. An international campaign was mounted on her behalf, spearheaded by her own poetry, which led to her release in October 1986 on the eve of the Reykjavik summit after Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

and Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

had been given copies of her Bloodaxe collection by David Owen

David Owen

David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP is a British politician.Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War...

. Allowed to come to Britain two months later for medical treatment, she settled in London for several years before moving back to Odessa. Her ﬁrst reading in Britain was organised by Bloodaxe at Newcastle Playhouse in 1987, and followed a civic reception offered by Newcastle City Council and Newcastle University. No, I’m Not Afraid sold over 20,000 copies.

Many other writers and books published by Bloodaxe have hit the headlines, arousing controversy and debate outside the poetry world. Tom Paulin

Tom Paulin

Thomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.- Life and work :...

’s essay collection Ireland & the English Crisis (1984) was savagely attacked by Enoch Powell

Enoch Powell

John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...

for its political stance. Another cause celebre was provided by Tony Harrison

Tony Harrison

’s v. (1985), his book-length poem set in a vandalised cemetery in Leeds during the UK Miners’ Strike which captured the angry, desolate mood of Britain in the mid-1980s. Two years after its publication, Richard Eyre

Richard Eyre

Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...

’s ﬁlm of the poem sparked a national furore not over Harrison’s politics but over his skinhead protagonist’s use of so-called ‘bad language’. Attacked by Mary Whitehouse

Mary Whitehouse

Mary Whitehouse, CBE was a British campaigner against the permissive society particularly as the media portrayed and reflected it...

(‘this work of singular nastiness’) and by Tory MPs wanting Channel 4’s broadcast to be stopped, the poem attracted lurid headlines in the tabloids. ‘A torrent of four-letter ﬁlth’ was the Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

’s description: ‘The most explicitly sexual language yet beamed into the nation’s living rooms…the crudest, most offensive word is used 17 times.’ The second edition of v. (1989) documents the media reaction to the ﬁlm.

Anthologies have enabled Bloodaxe to make an even greater range of modern and contemporary European poetry available to readers, including two seminal titles, Adam Czerniawski’s translations of Polish poets in The Burning Forest (1988) and The Colonnade of Teeth: Modern Hungarian Poetry (1996), edited by George Szirtes

George Szirtes

and George Gömöri

George Gömöri

György Gömöri was a Hungarian-American physician who became famous as histochemist....

. Many books published by Bloodaxe have given a platform to poets responding to times of oppression, war, political unrest, social division, displacement and global change, including Geremie Barmé and John Minford

John Minford

John Minford is a sinologist and literary translator. He is primarily known for his translation of Chinese classics such as The Story of the Stone and The Art of War.-Early years and education:...

’s Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience (1989), Ken Smith

Ken Smith (poet)

Ken Smith was a British poet.-Life:He was son of a farm labourer, and he had an itinerant childhood...

and Judi Benson’s Klaonica: poems for Bosnia (1993), John Fairleigh’s Where the Tunnels Meet: Contemporary Romanian Poetry (1996), Chris Agee’s Scar on the Stone: contemporary poetry from Bosnia (1998), J. Kates’s In the Grip of Strange Times: Russian poetry in a new era (1999), Neil Astley

Neil Astley

's Earth Shattering: ecopoems (2007) and Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil

's Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008).

Bloodaxe's most popular anthology has been Neil Astley

Neil Astley

's Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times (2002), devised as a book to introduce new readers to contemporary poetry as well as to show existing poetry readers a wider range of poems from around the world than is generally available from British poetry publishers. It has sold over 120,000 copies in Britain and over 40,000 in America, where it was launched in New York in a reading by Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep

Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...

and Claire Danes

Claire Danes

Claire Catherine Danes is an American actress of television, stage and film. She has appeared in roles as diverse as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life, as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, as Kate Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, as Yvaine in Stardust and as Temple Grandin in...

with Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

and other poets to a packed house in the Cooper Union

Cooper Union

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...

’s 700-seater auditorium (where Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

listened to Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

’s speeches). It was followed in 2004 by a sequel anthology, Being Alive; a third volume in the “trilogy”, Being Human, followed in 2011.

In 2000 Bloodaxe received funding from the Millennium Festival and the National Lottery through Arts Council England

Arts Council England

Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...

for an educational initiative to build a stronger awareness of 20th century poetry. This involved the publication of two books, Edna Longley

Edna Longley

’s Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry from Britain and Ireland, an anthology of 60 poets presented with informative introductions, and Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry, a book of key essays on poetry by poets (half of these specially commissioned), edited by W.N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis. The books were presented at schools conferences and university seminars, and both quickly become set texts.

In 2001 Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott

gave the ﬁrst of the Newcastle/Bloodaxe poetry lectures at Newcastle University. Several other poets have since spoken about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. These public lectures are later published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the opportunity to discover what leading poets have to say about their own subject.

Other initiatives to introduce contemporary poetry to new readers have included working with reading groups in Nottingham and in libraries across the West Midlands. And in Birmingham, Jonathan Davidson’s team at Book Communications have produced three touring theatre shows which have taken live poetry performances to venues across Britain: the ﬁrst drew on Staying Alive, the second on Being Alive, and the most recent, Changing Lives, was a theatre piece using poems from books published by Bloodaxe over the past 30 years.

In 2008, Bloodaxe celebrated its 30th birthday by publishing the world's first poetry DVD-book, In Person: 30 Poets. In Person was filmed by award-winning film-maker Pamela Robertson-Pearce and edited by Bloodaxe’s founding editor, Neil Astley

Neil Astley

, and features six hours of readings on two DVDs by 30 poets from around the world with an anthology including all the poems read on the films. Bloodaxe's digital initiative has continued with further DVD-books featuring work by poets John Agard

John Agard

John Agard is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in the United Kingdom.-Background:...

and Samuel Menashe

Samuel Menashe

with films by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, as well as books published with audio CDs by Sarah Arvio, Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay

and Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell

, and a new edition of Briggflatts

Briggflatts

Briggflatts is a long poem by Basil Bunting published in 1965. The work is subtitled "An Autobiography." The title "Briggflatts" comes from the name of a meetinghouse in a Quaker community near Sedbergh in Cumbria, England...

by Basil Bunting

Basil Bunting

featuring an audio CD of the work read by the author and a DVD with a film portrait of Bunting made by Peter Bell

Peter Bell

-People:* Peter Hansborough Bell , Governor of Texas, U.S. representative* Peter Bell , Australian rules footballer, played for Fremantle and North Melbourne* Peter R...

in 1982.

Bloodaxe's most recent anthologies have aimed to represent more recent generations of poets from Britain and Ireland. Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century (2009), edited by James Byrne

James Byrne

James Byrne may refer to:*James Byrne of Clone, County Wexford* James Byrne , Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross...

and Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard

, showcases 21 new poets who had not yet published book-length first collections at the time of publication, and Roddy Lumsden

Roddy Lumsden

's Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (2010) brings together work by 85 poets first published (or about to publish) from the mid-90s.

External links

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