In the second session of the book club (Wednesday April 23rd) we read poems from the Forward Anthology of Poetry 2001-2011. This anthology is a selection from the Forward anthologies published each year from the Forward Prize one of the big poetry competitions that tries to bring poetry to the attention of the nation. I introduced the discussion by noting that poetry which in Victorian times was widely read and valued by many middle class ‘cultured’ readers, is now a tiny fragment of the book market and little read except in school and university. I hoped to suggest that a poem could say and do things that no other art form can. A novel for instance is a very complicated and lengthy machine for saying something about life, whereas a poem is a supremely flexible instrument and can say all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. I also hoped to show that reading and discussing a poem slowly together can be enjoyable! Certainly the poems in the anthology had provoked strong feelings. Some were strongly disliked, though we also said this was not necessarily a criticism. Some were very much enjoyed – sometimes the same poems. Of the three poems we read in our session Anne Wigley’s Durer’s Hare was one of the most popular and we saw how it seemed to be simply a brilliant description of a painting but really was about the painter’s artistry in capturing the elusiveness of life and perhaps also about its own effort to capture a visual image in words… We also read George Szirtes’ ‘Song’ addressed to the South African anti-apartheid politician Helen Suzman, and U.A.Fanthorpe’s ‘A Minor Role’ thinking about the use of language, metaphors and imagery, and the additional meanings behind apparently simple words. A little snapshot I hope of the different things contemporary poems can do.