Neil Astley
Encyclopedia
Neil Astley is a British publisher, editor and writer.
, Paris (1972), and Newcastle University (1975–78; 1979–81). From 1972 to 1975 he worked in Leicester, Colchester, London, Paris and Australia, as a journalist, in publishing (Yale University Press
), and as a press officer for Warner Brothers’ magazine division and for Lyons Maid
ice cream. In his essay "The Story of Bloodaxe""The Story of Bloodaxe: 1978-2008", In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), pp237-262. he recounts two early life-changing experiences, the first in France in 1972 when he "spent six months in post-'68 Paris...and was radicalised)". The second was in Darwin
, Australia, where he was working as a sub-editor on the Northern Territory News
: "On Christmas Day, 1974, Darwin was destroyed by Cyclone Tracy
. I was trapped under a collapsed house. This brush with death was enough to send me post haste to Newcastle, where I was soon working as a bus conductor while waiting to start my course." In Newcastle upon Tyne, while studying for his degree at the university, he worked as production editor on Jon Silkin
's Stand magazine for three years, helped organise poetry readings at Morden Tower
and became involved with small press editing and publishing.
Astley has been an organiser of Newcastle Literary Festival, and as a director for three years of the Poetry Book Society
he was responsible for the addition of poetry in translation to the book club's remit. He has been a contributor to numerous radio and television programmes in Britain and Ireland, including the Today Programme
, Front Row
, Midweek
and Start the Week
on BBC Radio 4, The Verb on BBC Radio 3, GMTV's Sunday Programme, The Arts Show and Poetry Now on RTE
.
in Newcastle upon Tyne
, which he ran alone from home while doing postgraduate research or other jobs until it could pay him a wage seven years later. In 1982, Bloodaxe's first annual funding was secured from Northern Arts, bringing Simon Thirsk on board as co-director of the newly constituted Bloodaxe Books Ltd and giving the struggling imprint a sounder business base. Two years later he moved the press into its first office in the Exchange Buildings on Newcastle's Quayside.
Currently Bloodaxe is based at Highgreen Manor in the Tarset
Valley in Northumberland. As Bloodaxe's sole editor and managing director, Astley has published nearly a thousand books by over 300 writers, and he edits, produces and typesets all the press's annual output of around 30 new titles a year.
Bloodaxe won the Northern Electric Arts Award in 1989 and the Sunday Times Small Publisher of the Year Award in 1990. In 1995 Astley was given an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University, and he has been a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University's School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics since 2000, which has involved publishing the series of annual Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures given at the university.
Astley's stated aim has been to achieve editorial breadth and balance by publishing what he believes to be the best of many different kinds of poetry: "The only positive discrimination I have exercised has been in favour of literary quality", which has involved commissioning several anthologies designed to redress imbalances in the availability of writing by women or minorities, including Jeni Couzyn’s Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets (1985), E.A. Markham's Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain (1989), Linda France’s Sixty Women Poets (1993), Deryn Rees-Jones’s Modern Women Poets (2005), published as the companion anthology to a critical study, Consorting with Angels (2005), and Jeet Thayil
's Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008).
Astley "discovered" many of the most notable poets to emerge in British poetry over the past three decades: "Astley was the first to publish some of the major players", reported Daisy Goodwin
in a 1993 Guardian profile, these including Simon Armitage
, David Constantine
, Maura Dooley, Ian Duhig
, Helen Dunmore
, Jen Hadfield
, Jackie Kay
, Gwyneth Lewis
, Glyn Maxwell
, Sean O'Brien
, Jo Shapcott
and Pauline Stainer, many of whom are still published by him. Bloodaxe has attracted poets from other commerical poetry lists including Philip Gross
and Susan Wicks from Faber, Selima Hill
and Peter Reading
from Chatto, R.S. Thomas from Macmillan, Ken Smith
from Cape, Adrian Mitchell
from Allison & Busby, Brendan Kennelly
from a variety of Irish presses, and seven poets from the distinguished poetry list discontinued by Oxford University Press in 1999 (Fleur Adcock
, Moniza Alvi
, Roy Fisher
, Carole Satyamurti
, Penelope Shuttle
, Anne Stevenson
and George Szirtes
).
Philip Gross
and George Szirtes
went on to win the T.S. Eliot Prize with Bloodaxe collections, as did Jen Hadfield
from Shetland, with her second collection. He has also sought to redress the neglect of marginalised poets, publishing important collected editions of writers such as Martin Bell
(1988), James Wright
(1992), Basil Bunting
(2000), Barry MacSweeney
(2003), Martin Carter
(2006), Arun Kolatkar
(2010), A.S.J. Tessimond (2010) and Bernard Spencer
(2011), as well as a seminal edition for readers of Edward Thomas
, The Annotated Collected Poems (2008) edited by Edna Longley
.
In 1985 Astley encountered translations in an American magazine of poems by Irina Ratushinskaya
, a young Russian poet then 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. He commissioned a translator, David McDuff
, to produce a book of her poetry in English, which he combined with documentary material on the poet's imprisonment obtained from Amnesty International
. It included extracts from a camp diary charting life in the "Small Zone", a special unit for women prisoners of conscience in Mordovia where the poet was held. The the resulting book, No, I'm Not Afraid, was published in May 1986. 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 Reykjavík Summit
after Mikhail Gorbachev
and Ronald Reagan
had been given copies of her book by David Owen
.
Astley also published Tony Harrison
's v. (1985), a book-length poem set in a vandalised cemetery in Leeds during the Miners’ Strike
. Two years after its publication, Richard Eyre
’s film of the work on Channel 4
sparked a national furore not over Harrison’s left-wing politics but over his skinhead protagonist’s use of so-called "bad language". Astley's response was to assemble a new edition of v. (1989) including the poem with documentation of the newspaper and other media coverage which became a set text on cultural studies courses.
Astley commissioned books representing or addressing the poetry of particular generations or periods in British and Irish poetry, including the anthologies A Rumoured City (intr. Philip Larkin
, ed. Douglas Dunn
, 1982), The New Poetry (ed. Michael Hulse
, David Kennedy and David Morley
, 1993), The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry from Britain and Ireland (ed. Edna Longley
, 2000), The New Irish Poets (ed. Selina Guinness, 2004), Voice Recognition (ed. James Byrne and Clare Pollard, 2009) and Identity Parade: New Poets from Britain and Ireland (ed. Roddy Lumsden
, 2010), and books of essays such as Sean O'Brien
's The Deregulated Muse (1998), Strong Words (ed. W.N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis, 2000) and Deryn Rees-Jones's Modern Women Poets (2005).
and J.H. Prynne to performance poets John Agard
and Benjamin Zephaniah
. He has sought to open up publishing opportunities for women poets, "not because they are women poets but because they are outstanding writers by any standard. For many years Bloodaxe has been unusual in having a poetry list which is 50:50 male: female",and being "responsive to the changing literatures of Britain and of other countries", so that in 2010 it was possible for a leading Black British writer, Bernardine Evaristo
, to observe that "a single imprint, Bloodaxe Books, publishes nearly all the poets not with specialist black and Asian imprints, while several other prominent UK poetry publishers do not publish any black or Asian poets from Britain".
Astley has been called "the UK's leading anthologist", best-known for Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times (2002), Britain's biggest selling anthology of contemporary poetry since publication, whose sales have exceeded 200,000 copies in 2010. It is one of several anthologies he has published aimed at broadening the readership of contemporary poetry and re-igniting the interest of readers who haven't read much poetry since school. A US edition was published in 2003 by Miramax, launched by Astley in New York as a book "for people who know they love poetry and for people who think they don't" at a reading shared with Meryl Streep
, Claire Danes
, Nina Cassian
, Philip Levine
, Glyn Maxwell
, Paul Muldoon
, Alice Quinn and Charles Simic
.Staying Alive was a controversial book, popular with readers and booksellers. He has since published the sequels, Being Alive (2004), with a third companion volume, Being Human (2011). In 2008 he published In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, claimed to be "the world's first DVD-anthology", consisting of films on two DVDs of six hours of readings by 30 poets with all the texts included in the accompanying anthology, and he has since produced films with Pamela Robertson-Pearce of over a hundred more poets reading their work for archive, internet videos and further DVD-books.
from the Society of Authors
for a short collection of his own poems, The Speechless Act, later published by the Mandeville Press in 1984. His first book-length collection, Darwin Survivor (Peterloo Poets, 1988), was given a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. A second book of poems, Biting My Tongue, followed in 1995. He has also published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002/2003), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005).
Life and work
Astley grew up in Fareham, Hampshire, and was educated at Price's School, Fareham (1964–71), the Alliance FrançaiseAlliance française
The Alliance française , or AF, is an international organisation that aims to promote French language and culture around the world. created in Paris on 21 July 1883, its primary concern is teaching French as a second language and is headquartered in Paris -History:The Alliance was created in Paris...
, Paris (1972), and Newcastle University (1975–78; 1979–81). From 1972 to 1975 he worked in Leicester, Colchester, London, Paris and Australia, as a journalist, in publishing (Yale University Press
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
), and as a press officer for Warner Brothers’ magazine division and for Lyons Maid
Lyons Maid
Lyons Maid was a brand of ice-creams and ice-lollies created in 1925as a spin-off from the J. Lyons and Co. retail organisation.Well known brands produced by Lyons Maid included: Zoom, Strawberry Mivvie, Orange Maid, Lolly Gobble Choc Bomb, Fab and Haunted House.Its heyday was probably the 1970s...
ice cream. In his essay "The Story of Bloodaxe""The Story of Bloodaxe: 1978-2008", In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), pp237-262. he recounts two early life-changing experiences, the first in France in 1972 when he "spent six months in post-'68 Paris...and was radicalised)". The second was in Darwin
Darwin, Northern Territory
Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. Situated on the Timor Sea, Darwin has a population of 127,500, making it by far the largest and most populated city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, but the least populous of all Australia's capital cities...
, Australia, where he was working as a sub-editor on the Northern Territory News
Northern Territory News
The Northern Territory News is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Darwin, Australia. It is a subsidiary of News Limited, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It primarily serves Darwin and the rest of the Northern Territory...
: "On Christmas Day, 1974, Darwin was destroyed by Cyclone Tracy
Cyclone Tracy
Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, 1974...
. I was trapped under a collapsed house. This brush with death was enough to send me post haste to Newcastle, where I was soon working as a bus conductor while waiting to start my course." In Newcastle upon Tyne, while studying for his degree at the university, he worked as production editor on Jon Silkin
Jon Silkin
Jon Silkin was a British poet.-Early life:Jon Silkin was born in London, in a Jewish immigrant family and named after Jon Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga, and attended Wycliffe College and Dulwich College During the Second World War he was one of the children evacuated from London ; he remembered that...
's Stand magazine for three years, helped organise poetry readings at Morden Tower
Morden Tower
The Morden Tower in Back Stowell Street on the West Walls of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade 1 listed building. For the last 45 years Connie Pickard has been custodian of Morden Tower, and has made it a key fixture of Newcastle's alternative cultural life...
and became involved with small press editing and publishing.
Astley has been an organiser of Newcastle Literary Festival, and as a director for three years of the Poetry Book Society
Poetry Book Society
The Poetry Book Society was founded by T. S. Eliot and friends in 1953. Each quarter the Society selects one recently published collection of poetry for its members. The Society also publishes the quarterly poetry journal Bulletin, and it administers the competition for the annual T. S. Eliot Prize...
he was responsible for the addition of poetry in translation to the book club's remit. He has been a contributor to numerous radio and television programmes in Britain and Ireland, including the Today Programme
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
, Front Row
Front Row (radio)
Front Row is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. The BBC describes the programme as a "live magazine programme on the world of arts, literature, film, media and music." It is broadcast each week day between 7.15 and 7.45 and has a of highlights available for download. Shows usually include...
, Midweek
Midweek
MidWeek is a weekly United States tabloid shopper and advertisement periodical published in Honolulu, Hawaii and distributed throughout on the Islands of Oahu and Kauai. It is owned by Black Press and is a sister publication of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.- History :The shopper started in 1984 to...
and Start the Week
Start the Week
Start the Week is a discussion programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 which began in April 1970. The current presenter is the former BBC political editor Andrew Marr...
on BBC Radio 4, The Verb on BBC Radio 3, GMTV's Sunday Programme, The Arts Show and Poetry Now on RTE
RTE
RTÉ is the abbreviation for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the public broadcasting service of the Republic of Ireland.RTE may also refer to:* Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 25th Prime Minister of Turkey...
.
Bloodaxe
After graduating in 1978 with a first in English, Astley founded his poetry publishing house Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
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...
, which he ran alone from home while doing postgraduate research or other jobs until it could pay him a wage seven years later. In 1982, Bloodaxe's first annual funding was secured from Northern Arts, bringing Simon Thirsk on board as co-director of the newly constituted Bloodaxe Books Ltd and giving the struggling imprint a sounder business base. Two years later he moved the press into its first office in the Exchange Buildings on Newcastle's Quayside.
Currently Bloodaxe is based at Highgreen Manor in the Tarset
Tarset
Tarset is a civil parish in Northumberland, England, created in 1955 from parts of Bellingham, Tarset West and Thorneyburn parishes, it is west-north-west of Bellingham.It has a population of 196. In 1831, its population was 169...
Valley in Northumberland. As Bloodaxe's sole editor and managing director, Astley has published nearly a thousand books by over 300 writers, and he edits, produces and typesets all the press's annual output of around 30 new titles a year.
Bloodaxe won the Northern Electric Arts Award in 1989 and the Sunday Times Small Publisher of the Year Award in 1990. In 1995 Astley was given an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University, and he has been a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University's School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics since 2000, which has involved publishing the series of annual Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures given at the university.
Astley's stated aim has been to achieve editorial breadth and balance by publishing what he believes to be the best of many different kinds of poetry: "The only positive discrimination I have exercised has been in favour of literary quality", which has involved commissioning several anthologies designed to redress imbalances in the availability of writing by women or minorities, including Jeni Couzyn’s Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets (1985), E.A. Markham's Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain (1989), Linda France’s Sixty Women Poets (1993), Deryn Rees-Jones’s Modern Women Poets (2005), published as the companion anthology to a critical study, Consorting with Angels (2005), and 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).
Astley "discovered" many of the most notable poets to emerge in British poetry over the past three decades: "Astley was the first to publish some of the major players", reported Daisy Goodwin
Daisy Goodwin
Daisy Georgia Goodwin is an award-winning British television producer, poetry curator and best-selling novelist.Having attended Westminster School in London and Queen's College, London, Goodwin studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge and attended Columbia Film School before joining the BBC...
in a 1993 Guardian profile, these including 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...
, 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....
, 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...
, 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...
, 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...
, 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, many of whom are still published by him. Bloodaxe has attracted poets from other commerical poetry lists including 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...
and Susan Wicks from Faber, 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...
and 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"...
from Chatto, R.S. Thomas from Macmillan, Ken Smith
Ken Smith
Ken Smith grew up in Iowa, and attended Iowa State University, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s of Landscape Architecture in 1976. After graduation, he apprenticed with sculptor Paul Shao, and worked for the Iowa Conservation Commission in Parks and Recreation Planning...
from Cape, 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...
from Allison & Busby, 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:...
from a variety of Irish presses, and seven poets from the distinguished poetry list discontinued by Oxford University Press in 1999 (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...
, 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
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...
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:...
).
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...
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:...
went on to win the T.S. Eliot Prize with Bloodaxe collections, as did 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...
from Shetland, with her second collection. He has also sought to redress the neglect of marginalised poets, publishing important collected editions of writers such as Martin Bell
Martin Bell (poet)
Martin Bell was a British poet.Bell was strongly influenced by T. S. Eliot and Jules Laforgue. He used complex ironies and was skilled at deflating by rhetorical devices. However, he was far from being a right-wing satirist....
(1988), 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...
(1992), 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...
(2000), 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...
(2003), 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,...
(2006), 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...
(2010), A.S.J. Tessimond (2010) 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...
(2011), as well as a seminal edition for readers of Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas may refer to:People:*Edward Beers Thomas, American judge*Edward J. Thomas , librarian and author of several books on the history of Buddhism*Edward Lloyd Thomas, Confederate American Civil War general...
, The Annotated Collected Poems (2008) 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...
.
In 1985 Astley encountered translations in an American magazine of poems by 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...
, a young Russian poet then 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. He commissioned a translator, 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...
, to produce a book of her poetry in English, which he combined with documentary material on the poet's imprisonment obtained from 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...
. It included extracts from a camp diary charting life in the "Small Zone", a special unit for women prisoners of conscience in Mordovia where the poet was held. The the resulting book, No, I'm Not Afraid, was published in May 1986. 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 Reykjavík Summit
Reykjavik Summit
The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in the famous house of Höfði in Reykjavík, the capital city of Iceland, on October 11–12, 1986...
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 book 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...
.
Astley also published 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...
's v. (1985), a book-length poem set in a vandalised cemetery in Leeds during the Miners’ Strike
UK miners' strike (1984–1985)
The UK miners' strike was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trades union movement...
. 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 work on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
sparked a national furore not over Harrison’s left-wing politics but over his skinhead protagonist’s use of so-called "bad language". Astley's response was to assemble a new edition of v. (1989) including the poem with documentation of the newspaper and other media coverage which became a set text on cultural studies courses.
Astley commissioned books representing or addressing the poetry of particular generations or periods in British and Irish poetry, including the anthologies A Rumoured City (intr. 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...
, ed. Douglas Dunn
Douglas Dunn
Douglas Eaglesham Dunn, OBE is a Scottish poet, academic, and critic. He currently lives in Scotland.-Background:Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire. He was educated at the Scottish School of Librarianship, and worked as a librarian before he started his studies in Hull...
, 1982), The New Poetry (ed. 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 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...
, 1993), The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry from Britain and Ireland (ed. 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...
, 2000), The New Irish Poets (ed. Selina Guinness, 2004), Voice Recognition (ed. James Byrne and Clare Pollard, 2009) and Identity Parade: New Poets from Britain and Ireland (ed. 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...
, 2010), and books of essays such as 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...
's The Deregulated Muse (1998), Strong Words (ed. W.N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis, 2000) and Deryn Rees-Jones's Modern Women Poets (2005).
Reception
As editor at Bloodaxe for over 30 years Astley has been credited with "revolutionising" and democratising poetry publishing in Britain. Praised for his "omnivorous inclusiveness", he has given readers "as wide a range as possible of contemporary poetry by all kinds of writers", in so doing bringing more readers to contemporary poetry. This involved overturning an earlier bias favouring Oxbridge-educated male writers from south-east England, and publishing leading poets from America, the Caribbean and Europe (including many collections and anthologies of translated poetry from France, Russia, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia in particular), alongside books by new and established poets from all parts of Britain and Ireland, the latter ranging from modernists Basil BuntingBasil 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...
and J.H. Prynne to performance 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 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....
. He has sought to open up publishing opportunities for women poets, "not because they are women poets but because they are outstanding writers by any standard. For many years Bloodaxe has been unusual in having a poetry list which is 50:50 male: female",and being "responsive to the changing literatures of Britain and of other countries", so that in 2010 it was possible for a leading Black British writer, Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo MBE FRSL FRSA is a British author.She was born in London to an English mother and Nigerian Father and was raised in Woolwich, south east London.-Work:Evaristo is the author of six books that include:...
, to observe that "a single imprint, Bloodaxe Books, publishes nearly all the poets not with specialist black and Asian imprints, while several other prominent UK poetry publishers do not publish any black or Asian poets from Britain".
Astley has been called "the UK's leading anthologist", best-known for Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times (2002), Britain's biggest selling anthology of contemporary poetry since publication, whose sales have exceeded 200,000 copies in 2010. It is one of several anthologies he has published aimed at broadening the readership of contemporary poetry and re-igniting the interest of readers who haven't read much poetry since school. A US edition was published in 2003 by Miramax, launched by Astley in New York as a book "for people who know they love poetry and for people who think they don't" at a reading shared with 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...
, 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...
, Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic.. , The Independent She is noted for her translating abilities, and has rendered into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan...
, Philip Levine
Philip Levine
Philip Levine may refer to:*Philip Levine , American populist poet & professor of English, 2011-2012 Poet Laureate of the United States*Philip Levine , Russian-born American immuno-hematologist, researched blood groups...
, 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...
, 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...
, Alice Quinn and Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
.Staying Alive was a controversial book, popular with readers and booksellers. He has since published the sequels, Being Alive (2004), with a third companion volume, Being Human (2011). In 2008 he published In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, claimed to be "the world's first DVD-anthology", consisting of films on two DVDs of six hours of readings by 30 poets with all the texts included in the accompanying anthology, and he has since produced films with Pamela Robertson-Pearce of over a hundred more poets reading their work for archive, internet videos and further DVD-books.
Writing
In 1982 Astley received an Eric Gregory AwardEric Gregory Award
The Eric Gregory Award is given by the Society of Authors to British poets under 30 on submission. The awards are up to a sum value of £24000 annually....
from the Society of Authors
Society of Authors
The Society of Authors is a trade union for professional writers that was founded in 1884 to protect the rights of writers and fight to retain those rights .It has counted amongst its members and presidents numerous notable writers and poets including Tennyson The Society of Authors (UK) is a...
for a short collection of his own poems, The Speechless Act, later published by the Mandeville Press in 1984. His first book-length collection, Darwin Survivor (Peterloo Poets, 1988), was given a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. A second book of poems, Biting My Tongue, followed in 1995. He has also published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002/2003), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005).
As editor (selected list)
- Ten North-East Poets (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 1980) - Poetry with an Edge (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 1988, 1993) - Tony Harrison: a critical anthology (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 1991) - Biting my Tongue (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 1995) - New Blood (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 1999) - Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, UK 2002, Miramax BooksMiramax BooksMiramax Books was a publishing imprint started by Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films and was known for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. It published the memoirs of many major celebrities, including David Boies, Madeline Albright, Rudolph Giuliani, Tim Russert, and others...
, USA 2003) - Please to See Me: 69 Very Sexy Poems (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2003) - Do Not Go Gentle: poems for funerals (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2003) - Being Alive: the sequel to 'Staying Alive (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2004) - Passionfood: 100 love poems (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2005) - Bloodaxe Poetry Introductions I: Alexander, Alvi, Dharker, Kay (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2006) - Bloodaxe Poetry Introductions II: Enzenberger, Holub, Sorescu, Transtomer (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2006) - Bloodaxe Poetry Introductions III: Gilbert, Hirshfield, Kinnel, Merwyn (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2007) - Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds, with Pamela Robertson-Pearce (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2007) - Earth Shattering: ecopoems (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2007) - In Person: 30 Poets, with DVDs of films by Pamela Robertson-Pearce (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2008) - Being Human: the companion anthology to 'Staying Alive' and 'Being Alive (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 2011)
Novels
- The End of My Tether (Flambard Press, 2002; ScribnerScribner-Media:* Charles Scribner's Sons, also known as Scribner, New York City publisher* Scribner's Magazine, pictorial published from 1887–1939 by Charles Scribner's Sons, then merged with the Commentator which continued until 1942...
, 2003) - The Sheep Who Changed the World (Flambard Press, 2005)
Poetry collections
- The Speechless Act (The Mandeville Press, 1984), Eric Gregory Award
- Darwin Survivor (Peterloo Poets, 1988), Poetry Book Society Recommendation
- Biting My Tongue (Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, 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...
, 1995)
External links
- Discussion for Spread the Word between Neil Astley and Bernardine Evaristo
- Book Trade Lives: British Library oral history interview
- Neil Astley's 2005 StAnza lecture: "Bile, Guile and Dangerous to Poetry"
- Interview with Neil Astley. The Wolf
- Article by Neil Astley in the New Statesman "Give poetry back to people" 23 October 2006