The Guardian Compiles the Best Poetry Books of 2015

It's that special time again! As is the case with many periodicals, the Guardian has compiled a few of its favorite poetry books published over the course of this year in the U.K. Les Murray is here, as is Claudia Rankine. More:

The inimitable Les Murray’s Waiting for the Past secures its future with poems that effortlessly mix the conversational and the lyrical. He sends himself up as an “old book troglodyte” with no ambition for an upgrade from his ancient typewriter, but there is not a trace of the has-been about his wry, subtle, matchless voice, and the miles between Australia and the UK vanish as you read. But Murray is something of a known hero, while Andrew McMillan – a poet I have not come across until now – is unfamiliar but refuses to be ignored. Physical is a collection of homoerotic poems that are febrile, tender and written with an unwavering apprehension of beauty. The last line of the first poem is a fleeting manifesto: ‘writing something down keeps it alive’. With love poems – as many of these are – this idea becomes an imperative.

This year, Clive James – suffering from leukaemia – took up the idea of writing to stay alive in earnest. Sentenced to Life is that rare beast in poetry: a bestseller, a moving take on his, and our own, mortality. The godmother of a friend of mine, a woman over 100, wrote to congratulate James on the collection and he replied with a new poem written for and dedicated to her. Most writers write, in the first instance, for themselves. The least appealing poets also write to themselves: their poems might as well come with a “Keep Out” sign. But of this crime, James is innocent. His Japanese Maple, the most feted poem in the collection, will last.

Murray sends himself up as an “old book troglodyte”, but there is not a trace of the has-been about his matchless voice
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen occupied a category of its own this year. Her eloquent militancy about racism is arresting; reading sometimes feels like eavesdropping on America. Her collection is a remarkable achievement, not least because poems that set out to be polemical seldom work. [...]

Continue at the Guardian.