Publisher's Synopsis
OxfordPoets 2000 is the first OxfordPoets anthology, introducing the work of six writers whose poems extend the rich tradition of the Oxford list under the aegis of Carcanet, in association with the English Faculty, Oxford. The OxfordPoets editorial panel makes the selection, acknowledging promise and achievement. There is no editorial programme or ideology beyond a desire to represent the best. Drawing on a wealth of submitted manuscript material the editors choose what they find most compelling in terms of formal and rhythmic invention. Verse metered or unmetered, rhymed or unrhyming, with sure or fragmented syntax, makes specific claims. The poem, not the poet, answers.
The work of Rebecca Elson is complete: she died in 1999 at the age of 39, and her journal, source of the work included here, is currently being transcribed.
The editors are members of the OxfordPoets board.
Bernard O'Donoghue, born in Co. Cork in 1945, teaches Mediaeval English at Wadham College, Oxford and has published four books of poems of which the most recent was Here Nor There (Chatto, 1999).
Hermione Lee, Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, is author of Virginia Woolf (1996) and other biographical and critical works.
David Constantine teaches German Literature at Oxford and is a poet and translator. His most recent collection was The Pelt of Wasps (Bloodaxe).
