Twenty-six years ago, three American poets—I was one of them—put together The New Poets of England and America. We paired poets of the two countries in one alphabetical order, as if “England and America” shared a common enterprise. No longer would anthologists suggest such a thing. Of the twenty poets in this new Penguin Contemporary British Poetry¹—aged thirty-two to fifty—only Seamus Heaney is known in the United States.

In the late Fifties, it was common for English critics to lament that poetic vitality had departed imperial shores and emigrated to this half-savage country. Americans tended to accept this view, largely flattering although spiced with condescension. But by 1983, few Britons care for contemporary American poetry; the excellent English magazine PN Review mentions the American scene mostly to abuse it. Americans, on the other hand, dismiss British poetry without abuse—which is worse, because we do not read it at all. Few Americans are acquainted even with Geoffrey Hill, who has written the best poems of our time.² Doubtless the old notion of a common enterprise was an illusion—the literatures are separate enough—but bilateral provinciality does no one any good.

Editing this new Penguin, Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion are conscious of an historical role; it is their business