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!
At the moment there are four sections of the newsletter:
Forgotten Poems: I have been documenting pre-1930s poets and poems for the last 10 years or so, digging through old magazines, journals, anthologies, and archives, and have come across a vast wealth of poetry which has so-far languished in the vaults of history—“lost in time’s dust,” as Yone Noguchi would say—ignored and unloved. So I decided to start sharing some of my favourites. I tend to focus 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: While digging around for old poems, I also have come across a lot of visual art—drawings, paintings, illustrations, ornaments, borders, and so on, all of which has largely been forgotten, surviving in ratty scans of old, faded magazines. So I started restoring some of the images, and posting them here every now and then as well.
Haiku Thursdays: I have been studying and writing haikai, including haiku, hokku, and hiraku, 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 looong 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, 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.
