For memorial reasons, I’ve read, to myself and, occasionally, aloud to assembled others, a lot of Frank O’Hara this year. I read quite a lot of O’Hara most years. And I’ve read a little Robert Hass more days than not.
This list recognises the other poetry collections I’ve read and enjoyed most in the past twelve months.
- Rachael Allen : Faber New Poets 9 (2014)
- Edwina Attlee : The Cream (Clinic, 2016)
- Sam Buchan-Watts : Faber New Poets 15 (2016)
- Matthew Caley : Rake (Bloodaxe, 2016)
- Maura Dooley : The Silvering (Bloodaxe, 2016)
- Janet Fisher : Life and Other Terms (Shoestring, 2015)
- Marilyn Hacker : A Stranger’s Mirror (Norton, 2015)
- Lee Harwood : The Books (Longbarrow Press, 2011)
- Ian McMillan : Jazz Peas (Smith/Doorstop, 2014)
- Helen Mort : No Map Could Show Them (Chatto, 2016)
- Peter Sansom : Careful What You Wish For (Carcanet, 2015)
- Judi Sutherland & Jim Burns : Dark Matter (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2016)
- Barry Wallenstein : Drastic Dislocations (New York Quarterly Boks, 2012)
- Matthew Welton : The Number Poems (Carcanet, 2016)
Some Days You Do ... 
So good to see the photograph of Lee Harwood. It prompted me to revisit ’Slow’ from your “Bluer Than This’ collection which is a wonderful poem. I got to know Lee through Paul Evans who was a close friend. We shared a flat and lots of music during the period when he was writing “The Manual…” and “Sweet Lucy”. Happy New Year and thanks for your writing and of course this blog.
John … thanks for your kind and generous remarks. As I think I’ve mentioned in a recent blog (about Fielding Dawson) I went to one (or more) of Paul’s classes at the old Regent St.Poly and got to like him a lot and trust his judgements. I still can’t quite believe that Lee is dead.
Yes, I always tried to see Lee when I went back to Brighton. He was looking frail the last time I saw him, but I was still shocked when Richard Cupidi called me with the news. Mind you, I still think of Paul every time I hear Eric Dolphy. It was a great time being around those two.