As the year closed The Poetry Society asked 35 Poetry Review contributors and staff to give their choice books from 2022. It was a fantastic year for poetry with new collections from many former T. S. Eliot winners, including Don Paterson, Ocean Vuong and Sharon Olds. The Poetry Society saw two of 2022’s Poetry Review guest editors out with new collections: Denise Saul, with her debut, The Room Between Us (Pavillion), and Kim Moore with her Forward prize-winning collection, All the Men I Never Married (Seren Books).

Some collections were recommended repeatedly across contributors: Clare Shaw’s latest Towards a General Theory of Love (Bloodaxe), Victoria Adukwei-Bulley’s debut Quiet (Faber) and The Poetry Review‘s ex-editor Emily Berry’s Unexhausted Time (Faber) were on many selections. Picks from small presses include Niyi Osundare’s Green: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet (Blackwidow Press), Jan Zwicky’s And Then the Queen Hanged Herself (Deer Mountain Pages) and Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s One Language (Smith|Doorstop).

Please enjoy the full list of recommendations below. 

1. Richard Scott recommends Emily Berry’s Unexhausted Time (Faber).

‘Emily Berry’s Unexhausted Time is an extraordinary book-length, yet fragmentary, meditation which meanders through dreamscapes, psychic terrains, ‘incorrigible’ language and luminous symbols, asking with a seer-like voice, ‘Why then are we not healed?’’

2. Robin Houghton recommends Zaffar Kunial’s England’s Green (Faber).

‘A new collection from Zaffar Kunial is always a highlight; I enjoyed England’s Green very much.’

3. Sheri Benning recommends Jan Zwicky’s And Then the Queen Hanged Herself (Deer Mountain Pages).

‘Jan Zwicky’s pamphlet is breathtaking for the confluences it draws across vast time: the poems call on female figures from antiquity to give voice to intensely contemporary concerns.’

4. Kris Johnson recommends Jo Clement’s Outlandish (Bloodaxe).

‘As vivid as engravings, the poems in Jo Clement’s debut collection Outlandish braid together a richness of language and a precision of imagery to illuminate Traveller identity and Roma culture. These are poems of clarity and lyricism that sing of people, places, and the beauty of what is passed down.’

5. Richard Price recommends David Kinloch’s Greengown: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet).

‘Greengown: New and Selected Poems is a landmark book for David Kinloch. He was probably the first gay poet in the UK to address the AIDS crisis as it was happening, with a style that alternated crystal-clear lyric poems with rich prose poetry. His body of work is recognised for its humour, historic resonance, and humanity.’

6. Andre Bagoo recommends Phoebe Power’s Book of Days (Carcanet).

‘Phoebe Power’s Book of Days is a glorious chaplet of fragmented pathways and possibilities.’

7. Aviva Dautch recommends Jemma Borg’s Wilder (Liverpool University Press/Pavillion: 2022).

‘Jemma Borg’s sensuous attentiveness to how humans are entangled with the natural world makes her second collection utterly compelling. Sinuous language showcases her intellect and empathy as her poems set out to discover what is still wild in us.’

8. Karen Jane Cannon recommends Linda France’s Knucklebone Floor (Smokestack).

‘Linda France’s evocative Knucklebone Floor explores wilderness within a claimed landscape, a bridging of fragile habitat and preserved history.’

9. Maitreyabandhu recommends Ange Mlinko’s Venice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

‘Ange Mlinko’s sixth collection, confirms her as a major American poet. Working in received forms – exploring myth, war, love and loss – her combination of technical virtuosity, humour and tenderness, make her the poetic grandchild of James Merrill and Elizabeth Bishop.’

10. Alison Brackenbury recommends Wong May’s In the Same Light (Carcanet).

‘Wong May’s translations from Chinese illuminate war, flight and friendship by the kitchen stove. Here, across 1,500 years, meet Du Fu, bruised, apologising to you, ‘After I Fell off My Horse Drunk’.’

11. Fred D’Aguiar is recommending André Naffis-Sahely’s High Desert (Bloodaxe).

‘I’ve long admired the topical intelligence of André Naffis-Sahely not only as poetry editor but especially in his recent High Desert  for its counter to dominant narratives, its elastic sensibility (that encircles the globe) and firm sense of a politics that shapes poetry’s aesthetics.’

12. Sam Illingworth recommends Niyi Osundare’s Green: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet (Blackwidow Press).

‘Niyi Osundare’s collection provides a wake-up call for the protection of our endangered world.’

13. Ian Humphreys recommends Roy McFarlane’s Living By Troubled Waters (Nine Arches Press).

‘Ambitious, intimate and defiant, Roy McFarlane sweeps through history, reclaiming lost narratives.’

14. Astra Papachristodoulou recommends Kate Siklosi’s leavings (Timglaset).

‘Kate’s collection merges poetry with the fragile remains of nature — leaves, shells, plant stems — to speak about wilderness as a platform for reflection.’

15. Marvin Thompson recommends Yomi Ṣode’s Manorism (Penguin).

‘Yomi Ṣode’s language glimmers. His collection is a deep exploration of fatherhood and British Nigerian culture.’

16. Carole Bromley is recommending Clare Shaw’s Towards A General Theory of Love (Bloodaxe).

‘Clare Shaw’s Towards a General Theory of Love was a standout for me. Beautiful, deceptively simple poems of huge weight and power. I love them for their wit and for the deep underlying emotion. Wonderful book.’

17. Eric Yip recommends Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury).

‘Anthony’s collection is a moving portrait of a father as well as the brunt of his absence.’

18. Kathryn Bevis recommends Cian Ferriter’s Earth Black’s Chute (Southwards).

‘The poems in Cian Ferriter’s pamphlet (winner of the Fool for Poetry Chapbook) have a dark beauty and power. Emotionally compelling and rich with fresh and visually successful images, these poems often surprise us by making a shift from one place or time to another.’

19. Sarah Wimbush recommends Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s One Language (Smith|Doorstop).

‘Photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s collection is a moving and forewarning ‘How to tell a war story’, released as she begins to cover the conflict in Ukraine.’

20. Julia Bird recommends James Conor Paterson’s bandit country (Pan Macmillan).

‘bandit country jumps back and forth over the borders between the north of Ireland, the Republic and England, between histories and generations, everyday and Sunday-best speech. It’s hopping with energy.’

21. Sasha Dugdale recommends Stephen Watts’s Journeys Across Breath: Poems 1975-2005 (Prototype).

‘Journeys Across Breath charts the extraordinary and mercurial work of a poet who often remains outside the boundaries of UK poetry. His commitment to the community of world poets, his sensual and proliferating world deserve our attention. He is without doubt one of the remarkable writers of our time and Journeys Across Breath is testament to his miraculous eye and ear.’

22. Kimberly Campanello recommends Leland Bardwell’s Collected Poems (Salmon Poetry).

‘Leland Bardwell brings together the work of this inimitable Irish poet in this, her centenary year. Her unique view of people and circumstances is sharply conveyed in her work.’

23. Zakia Carpenter-Hall recommends Ada Limon’s ‘The Hurting Kind’ (Milkweed Editions).

‘Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind with its gentle and astute attention to detail, calls into question what makes ‘A Good Story’ and whether the author and indeed us as readers are ‘allowed delight’. This beautifully written and emotionally perceptive collection provides a variety of experiences and phenomena ‘to root for’.’

24. Laura McKee recommends 100 Queer Poems (Penguin).

‘100 Queer Poems, an anthology by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan, set itself quite a task and nailed it. Wonderfully warmly it captures the variousness of queerness across time and place.’

25. Linda Anderson recommends Linda France’s Startling (Faber).

‘Startling is Linda France’s tenth collection and follows hard on the heels of her Laurel prize winning collection, The Knucklebone Floor. It is profound and profoundly moving in its exploration of our relationship with Nature, a relationship which is of necessity internal, and not just external, both urgent and inflected by the changing seasons. This collection expresses the music of a deep communion, ‘refusing to collude/in the lie/of simplicity’.’

26. Jennifer Copley recommends Caroline Gilfillan’s Hail Sisters of the Revolution (Cowslip Press).

‘Hail Sisters is a glorious evocation of mid 1970’s London as told through a group of female musicians who lived in squats and played their music in pubs or wherever they could get a gig. The poems are exhilarating, tender and brave, Reading them is like eating a juicy apple in enormous bites!’

27. CAConrad recommends Iliassa Sequin’s Collected Complete Poems (Grey Suit Press).

‘Collected Complete Poems by Iliassa Sequin is a book many of us have been anticipating for many years, exceeding all expectations! One of the most extraordinary avant-garde poets, she refused to publish a book in her lifetime. Her husband, Ken Sequin, has beautifully collected her inimitable poetry for us in this new book published by Grey Suit Press in London.’

28. Jakky Bankong-Obi recommends Romeo Oriogun’s Nomad (Griots Lounge).

‘A stunning collection of imagery, Nomad paints a most vivid and beautiful broadstroke of life and the sojourning. And with so much heart.’

29. Olive Franklin recommends Ocean Vuong’s Time Is A Mother (Penguin).

‘Vuong thrusts readers into language that opens and reopens, ‘a cage/that widens’ to disparate meanings. This collection is full of doors, entrances, thresholds— liquidised boundaries— on which we are encouraged to linger, remaining both inside and out of our choices, our histories and our joys.’

30. Oakley Flanagan recommends Cecilia Knapp’s Peach Pig (Corsair).

‘Cecilia Knapp’s debut is a glorious collection. A female anti-bildungsroman, it seeks to find a form for loss in repetition, memory and cyclical seascapes. This deeply exciting, funny and frank collection of apparently personal poems explores girlhood, grief, sexuality and women’s bodies. Long live the pig! ‘

31. Katy Mack recommends Tara Bergin’s Savage Tales (Carcanet).

‘The poems, or poetic fragments, in Savage Tales seem to quiver with a strange, uncanny sense that something is always about to happen. Bergin’s third collection manages to be both compelling and disturbing and yet also, somehow, filled with joy too.’

32. Gemma Robinson recommends Vivek Narayanan’s After (NYRB).

‘Vivek Narayanan’s After, a ‘rewiring’ of Valmiki’s Ramayana for the twenty-first century, crackles with the energy of the author’s capacious reading and sharp wit. Its scale is generative and open, calling for a reanimation of epic terror and time.’

33. Jay Whittaker’s recommends Hannah Lavery’s Blood, Salt and Spring (Polygon).

‘Hannah Lavery’s Saltire-shortlisted debut, Blood, Salt and Spring, is a must-read collection. As you’d hope from Edinburgh’s Makar, here are sharp, tender, poignant, hopeful and often funny poems about Scotland today, beautifully crafted yet demanding the country holds itself to account for many sorts of belonging, always with a keen eye for nuance and double-think around nationhood and racism. ‘

34. Vicky Morris recommends Kathryn Bevis’s Flamingo (Seren).

‘Daring, deft and deeply affecting. Flamingo bops and shimmies with beauty, soars with all that we are.’

35. Joshua Blackman recommends Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency (Grove Press).

‘My recommendation is Grove Press’s reissue of Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O’Hara’s celebrated collection. Arranged as they originally appeared in 1957, the poems are joyful, vibrant and wildly surreal, instructive in their playfulness and continuingly modern: ‘the bats squeak in our wrestling hair / parakeets bungle lightly into gorges of blossom’.’

3 January 2022