cambridge

Cambridge is a superb place for poetry right now. There’s the magnificent Prynne; I’m reading “Biting The Air”; it’s incredible how he’s broken context to get rid of most of the literal meaning to leave the raw combining of words to create the poetic effect; he’s got poetry not merely to use some techniques of music, but to work like music. That’s stunning, to me. There’s Drew Milne, who's poems are a sequence of spotlights on ideas, he highlights so much in so few words, he leaves it to the listener to assemble the connections. There are so many more good voices in the colleges and in the town from that tradition: Rob Mengham, Richard Burns, Tom Raworth, Peter Riley.