Left to right: Tim Atkins, Amy De'Ath, Jeff Hilson, Richard Parker, Holly Pester, Sophie Robinson, and Carol Watts.
Perhaps more than at any other time in recent decades, the influence of North American poetry and poetics on English poetry is surfacing in a number of different ways. Sharing a language but positioned at a distance from the personalities and occasional conflicts between schools and coteries, contemporary English poets combine their North American influences differently, perhaps more flexibly, than North American poets do. As the works collected here demonstrate, the results of these combinations are surprising and exciting, distant and familiar; this poetry is engaging even and especially when considered apart from its influences and precedents from across the pond.
The fifth and final installment of Pam Brown’s feature “Fifty-one Contemporary Poets from Australia” (ordered, “[i]n the interest of objectivity,” by “a recently invented ‘downunder’ method — the reverse alphabet”) includes work from Justin Clemens, Bonny Cassidy, Michelle Cahill, Michael Brennan, Ken Bolton, Judith Bishop, Louis Armand, Chris Andrews, Elizabeth Allen, Ali Alizadeh, and Adam Aitken, along with artwork by Louis Armand and Ken Bolton.
This feature celebrates the life and work of Marjorie Perloff at almost exactly the moment she receives the honor of induction into the American Philosophical Society, headquartered in Philadelphia, which happens to be — some blocks west of that venerable institution — home base for Jacket2. APS election is something like what in L.A., Perloff's own home, is called “a lifetime achievement award.” So it seemed time for us to bring together not just friends but also critical admirers at various distances to write brief retrospective reviews of her work over the years.
 Image (MIR) 3J2.jpg "Louis Armand, \"Mir.\"")
