The Poetry community, such as it is, is an odd thing, fragmented, clique-ridden and with only a fragile centre of canonical names and household-famous poems but to say that these 11 names would be ones you've never heard of is, as one or two comments already point out, pushing it a bit, http://www.partisanmagazine.com/blog/2015/6/27/the-10-best-uk-poets-youve-never-heard-of-plus-1-you-should-read-again-you-lazy-git
If the link doesn't work, it's a blog called 'Partisan'.
We are, of course, betting without Yeats but still, to suggest that Adrian Henri has become obscure suddenly makes me feel very old indeed. Has that much time really passed already.
He was most gentle in answering my naive and innocent questions in the bar of Cartmel College, Lancaster University in the winter of 1978/79 after a reading. I had bought him a white wine and soda and was secretly jealous of those who had cornered Roger McGough. The occasion is not likely to be found in any memoir of either Liverpool poet but for me, at that tender, impressionable age, it was like talking to McCartney when you actually liked Lennon better (or vice versa). When he'd finished his drink, he offered to buy me one but I declined the offer, awestruck and unable to see why Adrian Henri should be buying me a drink.
It would appear from this evidence found on the internet that the white wine and soda that I bought him wasn't the only one he ever had.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I publish booklets of my own poems, or did. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become. It keeps me out of more trouble than it gets me into. I hope you find at least some of it worthwhile.