Scene and heard: A week of Cambridge poetry

Reflecting on the role of an editor in his introduction to the Carcanet Press-published New Poetries V, the poet Michael Schmidt observed: “Where there are schools they look out for the truants.” Starting on Saturday 22 November, a week of free events will celebrate the creative truancy that characterises some of the best poetry in Cambridge.

Co-organised by Schmidt, a writer in residence at St John’s College, John Wells of the University Library, and Vahni Capildeo, the new Judith E. Wilson Creative Writing fellow, and involving numerous other Colleges as well as the University Library, the “Cambridge Poetry Collection”, will feature readings by some of the leading poets connected with Cambridge at the moment.

They include John James, Clive Wilmer, Mark Ford, Simon Jarvis and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. In addition, there will be opportunities to hear work by new poets, many of whom are current students or staff members at the University. The aim is to enable as many people as possible to enjoy a celebration of the current poetry scene in the University city, while also encouraging dialogue and discussion between its constituent parts. It will also draw attention to the University Library’s expanding archive of Cambridge poets’ manuscripts.

Cambridge has been a nerve centre for innovative poetry since before the days when Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe studied there. For some long-standing poetry-lovers, the “Cambridge Poetry Collection” may also recall the ambitious biennial international Cambridge Poetry Festivals that ran from 1975 to 1985.

Described by the Guardian when it started as “a poetry festival of vast proportions”, the series attracted major names from all over the world. Readings and debates were broadcast by the BBC, and some recordings can still be found in the British Library’s National Sound Archive.

Since the end of that festival’s run, the Cambridge poetry scene has appeared less attentive to a general readership. Hostile critics portray it as dominated by a ‘Cambridge School’. At the same time, however, the group has for years provided a radical challenge to what can seem a lacklustre mainstream mired in convention and complacency. 

The organisers of the new Cambridge Poetry Collection hope to provide stages for some of the best poets, old and new, that the city and its universities have to offer. “Poetry in Cambridge is rich and various. There’s no lack of exciting new work,” Schmidt said. “What’s strange is that often the chance to hear locally-based poets will happen at a festival somewhere else. It will be good to hear Cambridge poetry here again in all its diversity.”

“Some Cambridge writers are formally experimental. Demanding poetry is rewarding poetry – and has been since the time of Spenser. The poet-scholar is no stranger to our tradition and should be celebrated; there is no rule that says the mainstream is not able to flow up hill as well as down! A lot of ‘popular’ poetry is self-limiting and repetitive, obedient to the fashions and plausibilities of the day. You don’t need to belong to a school to see this.”

Compared with the grand international scale of its predecessor - which Schmidt remembers as “without doubt the most exciting poetry festivals I’ve ever attended, and the definitive festivals of their kind” – the Cambridge Poetry Collection is being run on a shoestring. The University Library will host some of the main events while leading lights of the poetry scene around Cambridge have been invited to organise others in their own Colleges. Poets taking part have waived performance fees and venues have been found in Murray Edwards, St John’s, Trinity, Gonville and Caius, Corpus Christi, Fitzwilliam and Jesus Colleges.

The events include a reading by Clive Wilmer of his sequence, Urban Pastorals, the launch of Selected Poems by the 20th-century English poet Nicholas Moore, a debate on “the work of the editor”, and readings by a range of major working poets who are either currently active in Cambridge, or alumni of the University.

The founder of the original Cambridge Poetry Festival, Richard Berengarten, will introduce a showcase of new Cambridge Poets at Corpus Christi College on 25 November. Elsewhere Professor Simon Jarvis, whose work Night Office has been described as “an extraordinary meditation across 224 pages exploring the invisible life of the soul” will appear at the same reading as the London-based Mark Ford, and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, now Master of Magdalene College and himself a noted poet and translator of poetry. St John’s poet Dan Burt will be reading at Trinity with the legendary Anne Stevenson, and the doyenne of poets, poetry biographers and translators Elaine Feinstein will be joined by Angela Leighton and the award-winning Sean Borodale at St John’s.

“When I arrived at Cambridge two years ago I got to know some of the poets associated with the so-called ‘Cambridge School’. I realised then what Cambridge can do for emerging writers and for readers, how various and challenging the microcosm is, so much more engaging than the bland macrocosm.” Schmidt added. “It seems natural for many of the most vigorous elements in this poetry world to be presented if not together, at least adjacent, and in the same week.”

The Cambridge Poetry Collection will run from Saturday 22 November until Friday 28 November, with free events open to all throughout. Full details can be found at the dedicated website here.