Poetry International Web: Introduction

Issue 3: May 1, 2006

Welcome to the third UK issue on Poetry International Web. Attentive readers, who will have seen work from Welsh and Northern Irish poets in previous issues, will doubtless be expecting a Scottish flavour to this issue, and will not be disappointed. In fact, both of our guest editors, WN Herbert and Roddy Lumsden, are Scottish poets of some distinction. Herbert provides our overview of the contemporary Scottish poetry scene, along with poems from David Kinloch and Tracey Herd; Lumsden, now a London resident, introduces us to the work of John Stammers and Jen Hadfield, who has made a home for herself in the Hebrides.

The poems selected look widely for their inspiration, whether that be geographical, temporal, or even bibliographical. There are subjects from distant sheep to a close-up of freshly-given milk, from organic supermarkets to a sixteenth-century castle, and references to the New York School, Agatha Christie, Robert Louis Stevenson and Anglo-Saxon. These are poems full of life and myth, of horses and angels, queens and shadows, films and fairytales; poems to covet, as in the title of Hadfield's 'Thou shalt want want want'.

Hadfield, who now holds the record of being the youngest poet on the UK pages, is a voice from a new and talented generation, which alone would give this issue some proof of being interested in the cutting edge of UK poetry. Further to that, though, there is much new work in these pages, Kinloch and Herd representing themselves entirely by new poems, making this issue not only interested in the cutting edge of new UK poetry, but committed to it. Read on, and enjoy.