“There is no class of literature so secure of a lasting reputation as poetry, and there is no class that is treated with so severe a jealousy and rigour. Again and again the judgment of contemporaries has been reversed, the popular poet of one age being frequently doomed to extinction in the next.” (J. Dennis, 1896)
The Forgotten Poets Newsletter is dedicated to out-of-print, obscure, and generally under-appreciated poets and poems, particularly from the late-1800s and early-1900s. Within this, I also have a specific interest in the intertwining histories of tanka and haiku, both in Japanese and English, and their relationship to the beginnings of free-verse. All this aside—I post poems! Lots of poems! And if you like poems, I personally guarantee you won’t be disappointed!
There are four sections of the newsletter:
Forgotten Poems: A living anthology of some of my favourite pre-1930s poets and poems, sourced from over 10 years of digging through old magazines and anthologies, which has otherwise languished in the vaults of history—“lost in time’s dust,” as Yone Noguchi would say—ignored and unloved. The focus tends to be on short, unrhymed poems, but for those who like formal verse, check out The Book of Lost Rhymes, a sub-section for lovers of metric madness, ragged rhyme, and blank ballads!
Forgotten Prints: A living gallery of pre-1930s visual art—drawings, paintings, illustrations, ornaments, and so on—most of which has also largely been forgotten and ignored, surviving in ratty scans of old, faded magazines, digitally restored to its previous glory.
Haikai & Haiku: I have been studying and writing haikai, including hokku, hiraku, haiku, and senryū, alongside other popular Japanese forms like tanka and dodoitsu, for over 20 years now with my writing partner Laurence Stacey. Over this time I have collected together volumes of translations, histories, and notes, which I intend to turn into a book on haiku in English one day. It’s still a long ways off, so I decided to present some of the material here, for anyone who might be interested.
Vespers: A small section for some of my own poetry, music, art, and other bits and pieces. Still very much a work in progress!
Alongside all this, I include fragments of history, theory, and general poetic miscellanea, when I have the time and energy. None of the posts are paywalled, so if you’d like to support the project, we have books for sale . . .
Forgotten Poets also publishes books! Lovingly curated collections of out-of-print poets and forgotten poetry from the late-1800s and early-1900s, with both kindles and paperbacks available, as well as PDFs.
So far the catalogue includes maverick ‘free’ and ‘new’ verse poets like Adelaide Crapsey, Mina Loy, Jessie Dismorr, Charles Reznikoff, Mary Carolyn Davies, and Gwendolyn B. Bennett; imagist poets like F.S. Flint, T.E. Hulme, Hilda Doolittle, and Amy Lowell; and haiku and tanka poets like Yone Noguchi, Sadikichi Hartmann, Jun Fujita, and Lewis G. Alexander.
