Thank you for telling us once again which books we need to read over the next 12 months (Book ahead, Review, 7 January). But how do you know? Presumably no one at the Guardian has read all these books, since they have not yet been published. Nor, it is fair to assume, have you read all the other unpublished books that are not on your list. Do “the best books of 2017” really include only eight books of poetry? And is it statistically likely that five of these are going to be published by just one publisher? There will be hundreds of poetry books published in the UK, many of the most interesting by independent presses whose books are never reviewed in the mainstream media.
Smokestack Books is publishing 18 books of poetry this year, including new collections by Michael Rosen and Steve Ely, an anthology of poetry from the Algerian war of independence and a new translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s epic poem Lenin. There is more to “everything you need to know about the literary year” than London publishers’ catalogues dressed up as literary criticism.
Andy Croft
Smokestack Books, Ripon, North Yorkshire
