Members' AreaContributors to The Poetry Review share their essential poetry of the moment
Susannah Dickey’s ‘Everybody dies’ Mixtape
Susannah Dickey’s review of Kandace Siobhan Walker’s Cowboy and Leontia Flynn’s Taking Liberties, ‘Remaking the poem, remaking the world’, was published in The Poetry Review, Vol 113, No 4, Winter 2023. ‘I’m on a real elegy kick at the minute.’ She explains in her mixtape. ‘By which I mean, I want to kick elegy.’
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight’s ‘Admitting the Wound’ Mixtape
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight’s ‘god is watching’, ‘life & no escape’, ‘ukrainian as in’ and ‘remnants’ were published in The Poetry Review Vol 113, No 3, Autumn 2023. Her mixtape explores poems in which there is ‘a moment that gives way to a gasp, which punctures breath, an aural wound into which figurative light – i.e. meaning – may flood.’
Victoria Kennefick’s ‘Holding on and Letting Go’ Mixtape
Victoria Kennefick’s ‘Watching Your Egg Crack’ and ‘I Do An Egg Cleanse Because I Must’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 113, No 2, Summer 2023. Her mixtape follows poems that have helped her process the shifts in her life caused by the lasting impact of the Covid pandemic.
Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s Devastation Mixtape
Rae Armantrout’s American Catastrophe Mixtape
Rae Armantrout’s ‘Sides’, ‘Machine Learning’, and ‘Proof’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 112, No 2, Summer 2022. “America is sick.” She writes. “I chose poems that variously address or suggest the symptoms.”
Joyelle McSweeney’s Necropastoral Mixtape
Joyelle McSweeney’s essay ‘On Sylvia Plath marking the 90th year of her birth’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 112, No 2, Spring 2022. Her Poetry Mixtape covers ten pieces, from Frank Ocean to Andrew Marvell, that inspire her towards something like hope in the current landscape of eco-catastrophe.
Elaine Feeney’s Baker’s Dozen Mixtape
Elaine Feeney interviewed Margaret Atwood in The Poetry Review, Vol 110, No 4, winter 2020. Her Poetry Mixtape is diverse and fierce, with much-loved classics by Frank O’Hara, Don Paterson and Derek Mahon, set alongside blazing testimonies by Rita Ann Higgins, Claudia Rankine and Warshan Shire.
Tommy Sissons’s Wigan Pier Special Mixtape
Tommy Sissons’s poems ‘English Channel’ and ‘Suedehead’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 110, No 3, Autumn 2020. As a sound specialist, the dynamic and fluid rhythm of language has influenced his selection.
Nicholas Wong’s Meaningless Mixtape
Nicholas Wong’s poem ‘That World, According to Keanu Reeves’ was published in The Poetry Review, Vol 110, No 1, Spring 2020. “Language lovers,” he writes, “I invite you to enter a meaningless reality and explore its gorgeous form.”
Amy Acre’s Lucky 13 Mixtape
Amy Acre’s poems ‘Ice Baby’ and ‘In the wet-aired trenches of the Tube I was’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 109, No 4, Winter 2019. She chosen “the best poems either light a fire in my mind that gets me gasping for the pen, or leave me throwing down the book in disgust, in the knowledge that I might as well give up now. ”
Jay G. Ying’s Pitbull Meme Mixtape
Jay G. Ying, who reviewed Kim Hyesoon’s Autobiography of Death in The Poetry Review, Vol 109, No 2, Summer 2019, reckons the mixtape, what Geoffrey O’Brien described as the most widely practised American art form, has now been superseded globally by internet memes. Poetry will outlast both of course…
Caroline Bird’s Now That’s What I Call Thursday Mixtape
Caroline Bird’s poem ‘Fancy Dress’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 109, No 1, Spring 2019. Her mixtape was put together on a Thursday and for Thursdays, but you can read these poems any day of the week: what you do in your spare time is up to you.
Anthony Anaxagorou’s Start to Finish Mixtape
Anthony Anaxagorou’s review of Chris McCabe and Jericho Brown appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 109, No 1, Spring 2019. His mixtape keeps it moving and seeks to equip us through the essentials.
Rainie Oet’s Hallway Noir Mixtape
Rainie Oet’s poems ‘Caverns’ and ‘I Miss the Slug Ooze of That Summer You Died’ are published in The Poetry Review, Vol 108, No 4, Winter 2018. Their mixtape dons a trenchcoat and beats the final boss with one life remaining.
Dzifa Benson’s Small Objects of Desire Mixtape
Dzifa Benson’s reviews of Tracy K. Smith and August Kleinzahler appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol 108, No 4, Winter 2018. Her Small Objects of Desire link the ancient to the modern, rearranges the cogs of poetic machinery, and amplifies quiet voices.
Kit Fan’s Emergency Stir-fry Mixtape
Kit Fan’s poems ‘A Long Story of Moon’ and ‘Noh Mask, Yaseonna’ are published in The Poetry Review, 108, No 3. His sodium laced mixtape satiates your hunger by way of Emily Dickinson and the MTV Movie Awards. Delicious!
Helen Mort’s Bittersweet Symphony mixtape
Helen Mort’s poem ‘Rain Twice’ is published in The Poetry Review, 108, No 2. Join her on her Friday Night Poetry Party with poems for late night whisky fuelled introspection.
A.K. Blakemore’s tapeworm mixtape
A.K. Blakemore’s poems ‘dicks like jesus’ and ‘mouse’ are published in The Poetry Review, 108, No 2. Her mixtape is special, disgusting, and part suspended in bromide.
Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s Murderously Hopeful Mixtape
Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s poem ‘We have to Leave the Earth Because We Know So Much’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Volume 108, No 1, Spring 2018. Her mixtape came delivered containing traces of blood, origin unknown.
Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Biceps Emoji Mixtape
Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s poem ‘Craquelure’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Volume 108, No 1, Spring 2018. Her mixtape features poems that sing, poems crossing language boundaries, and the best poem about a cervical smear you’ll ever read.
Richard Georges’ Inner Spheres Mixtape
Richard Georges’ poems ‘On Remembering, or Dreams of Remembering’ and ‘Too Full of Vermouth and Cigarette Smoke’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Volume 107, No 4, Winter 2017. His mixtape, assembled through the lens of fatherhood, looks at the identities passed down by parents to their children, and children tracing the shapes of their parents.
Aria Aber’s Cinnamon Green Mixtape
Aria Aber’s poems ‘Fata Morgana, 1987’ and ‘Rapture Series’ appeared in The Poetry Review, 107, No 3. Her ‘Behind the poem’ essay on ‘Fata Morgana, 1987’ is also published online. Her synesthetic mixtape includes many bold flavours: lavender, mescal, sunlight, clotted cream, milk with swan feathers.
Stephanie Burt’s You Could Still Be Fine Mixtape
Stephanie Burt’s reviews appeared in The Poetry Review 107:3 and 106:2. Her mixtape starts serious and ends sweetly awkward.
D.M. Aderibigbe’s Timeless Mixtape
D.M. Aderibigbe’s poem ‘Letter from My Father, Odysseus’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Volume 107, No 2, Summer 2017. His mixtape nourishes, like Modenine and Remi Aluko; explores, re-purposes and renovates inner and outer spaces.
Andrew McMillan’s McMixtape
Andrew McMillan’s poems ‘first time sexting’ and ‘first time “posh”’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol. 107, No. 2, Summer 2017. His mixtape dances to the things not said, breaks and remakes your heart, compels you to move and compels you to listen.
Joe Dunthorne’s Cheery Threats Mixtape
Joe Dunthorne’s poem ‘Sweetheart underwater’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol. 107, No 1, Spring 2017. On his mixtape: poems from New York, the capybara unit of measurement, and treasures from the live poetry recording archives.
Khairani Barokka’s Lilac Mood Mixtape
Khairani Barokka’s poems ‘Flood Season’, ‘Jakarta’, and ‘Ramadhan’ appeared in The Poetry Review, Vol. 107, No 1, Spring 2017. Her mixtape takes us to poems in translation, poems with thoughts of home, poems to steady and to feed us.