"Many of 2025's most notable collections have been powered by a spirit of wild experimentation, pushing the bounds of what poetry might be thought to be. Sarah Hesketh's 2016 (CB Editions) is a fabulous example: it takes 12 interviews with a variety of anonymous individuals about the events of that year and presents fragments of the transcripts as prose poems. The cumulative effect of these voices is haunting and full of pathos, as they vote for whoever, and their life stays exactly the same."
"The former's latest collection, The Book of Jonah (Picador), moves the minor prophet out of the Bible into a world of arts conferences, where he is continually reminded that his presence everywhere is mostly futile. Makoha's The New Carthaginians (Penguin) turns Jean-Michel Basquiat's idea of the exploded collage into a poetic device. The result? The visible / making itself known by the invisible."
"Pipping it to the Forward prize for best collection this year were two books, the first time the prize has rewarded two winners. Karen Solie's Wellwater (Picador) doesn't just decry environmental catastrophe, it also focuses its gaze on the underlying economics that have brought us to this point. Her tone is refreshing, offering comfort only through its clarity: Under the darkest night skies on Earth / an explanation is not forthcoming."
Many 2025 poetry collections embrace wild experimentation, expanding formal boundaries and reconfiguring source material into new poetic forms. Several books transform interviews and transcripts into prose poems that create cumulative, haunting voices. Other collections relocate biblical figures to contemporary settings and convert visual collage techniques into poetic devices. Sonnets reappear as a means to interrogate identity and same-sex marriage through vivid, simple images. Environmental concerns are addressed alongside analysis of underlying economic causes rather than mere lamentation. Journey poems trace movement between northern Sri Lanka and the United States, blending travel, memory, and diasporic experience.
#experimental-poetry #form-remixcollage #sonnets--identity #environment--economics #migration--diaspora
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]