The Poem of the Decade

With Ms. Duffy's new book imminent, she is the only poet likely to be added to this year's shortlists for Best Poem and Best Collection and prevent a walkover for Sean O'Brien's Goddess and Europa respectively. Although one can never quite say.
But my reading of new poetry, releases of new titles that recommend themselves and the buying of new such books has dwindled to the extent that this tenth year of the minorest of minor poetry awards is likely to be its last.

However, it was always the intention to look at the winners from those ten years and make a further shortlist for the Poem of the Decade, not the customary decade but 2009-2018.
I'm going to summarily give the Best Collection title to David Harsent's Night, from 2011, which has stayed in the memory most persistently but, for me at least, those ten years haven't produced the sort of list as competitive as those decades in which Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney, Larkin, Gunn, Sylvia Plath or Paul Muldoon were putting in their best work. But perhaps it's just the morning sun, when it's in my face, really shows my age.

Best Poem, however, is due more consideration, and I am doing this ahead of this year's O'Brien-Duffy head-to-head but can supplement any further contenders before reaching the decision. The shortlist as it stands is picked from the winners thus far.
Yesterday was a glorious Sunday going back to these poems while bathing, a picture to relish once conjured, only for The Early Music Show to follow up on the subject of Francois Couperin's  Lecons de Tenebres and suddenly one was re-assured that being alive really is worth it. But these are six excellent poems,

John Burnside, Mistaken for a Unicorn, from Still Life with Feeding Snake
Julia Copus, Stars Moving Westwards in a Winter Garden, from The World's Two Smallest Humans
Helen Farish, Pastoral, from The Dog of Memory
Roddy Lumsden, Women in Paintings from Not All Honey
Martin Mooney, Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, from The Resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen
Sean O'Brien, The Beautiful Librarians, from The Beautiful Librarians

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There will be much more to think about in deciding this year's Best Event, with a few still to come and several already shortlisted.
Best Novel might be unsatisfactory with the Murakami here but having to wait its turn while Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf makes a powerful case for being Best Biography Ever.
The Best Record of the Year might also be hotly contested with other contenders involved beyond a debate between Shostakovich and Buxtehude.
We will see.