A note on : Poetry magazine : Reading list (October 2019)

The Reading List is a feature of Poetry’s Editors’ Blog. This month, contributors to the October 2019 issue share some recommendations. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/10/reading-list-october-2019

S.J. Fowler
I don’t read many poems. I have to do that for work a lot so it’s a busman’s holiday now. However, I do want to just list those whose work I know (and inevitably know in person, and like) whom I think are really underappreciated in England, because there are so many of them who aren’t well-known since their work is challenging but without a bio hook. But then I’ve got to choose from hundreds. Really—hundreds. Instead, to tell the truth, these books are good food for my own machine of poems:

  • The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor

  • John Barleycorn, Jack London

  • Days Without End, Sebastian Barry

  • The Master of Mankind (Horus Heresy series), Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  • Journey to the End of Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline

  • The Land of Ulro, Czeslaw Milosz

  • The Great Fall, Peter Handke

  • From King of Karachi to Lockdown in the Costa Del Crime: Meet the International Smuggler Who Dominated Europe’s Worst Prison, Chet Sandhu

  • Lanny, Max Porter