"The Forward Book of Poetry 2023"

Magazines mentioned include Manchester Review, Poetry Review, PN Review, Magma, Granta, Oxford Poetry, Under the Radar, Poetry London, Rialto, Bad Lilies.

Here's the start of a poem I'd reject because of its obscure spaces, slashes and use of capitals. They make me suspicious.

It's Saturday     most often neighbor     we Are walking with our daughter lately     even when/ We walk together everywhere we go we want to go home everywhere     / But oh hey did you see that story

and the poem with this typical stanza bring out my "Call My Bluff" mode -

this being the Congo being than necrosis other than turbulent axioms as embittered solar force

Neither "Dog on a British Airways Airbus 319-100" or "Imperium Abcedarian" work for me. "All of the pans in the kitchen" and "When I was a child..." is like some Flash Fiction I read. I don't think they would be in best-of-year flash anthologies.

One trend is the use of the same word in most lines of a poem.

• "Red data list of threatened british fungi: mainly smuts" - 29 lines. "smut" is used 31 times
• "Holy Water" - 14 lines. "The river is/will/has" is used 13 times
• "We are trying to make sense" - 14 lines. "feel[ing] is used 13 times, along with "fooling" 3 times, etc

It's very much poetry for poets. Obscure layouts and disjunctive content. Little narrative.

Parts of "Up late", "extract from H of H Playbook", and "Hyena Q & A" are ok. Maybe "Boy Sells Gum at Qalandiyah" and "CrashSite" are my favourite pieces. "Monster Tinder" is fun, but surely minor.