FOREWORD BY GRIFF RHYS JONES

HERE IS ANOTHER selection of first-rate poetry: comic, moving, pertinent, witty, sharp, short and longish. Gathered together in this book is a comprehensive selection of the finest verse of the last hundred years. A host of different voices, which I hope will surprise and entertain in their variety and scope. Modern poetry is not the difficult and inaccessible stuff that popular imagination would have it. These poems really mean something to a lot of people.

Well, there we are. I can write with such breezy confidence because this selection is actually new and surprising to me as well, though not everybody seems to understand this. After the success of The Nation’s Favourite Poems, for instance, a doctor from Persia sent me a poem of his own. There was a note with it: ‘I hope you will agree with the many who have told me that this is the best poem ever written in the sonnet form and include it in your next anthology.’

Alas for the doctor, the retired coal miner, the former redcoat, and the many other aspiring poets who send me their work, the judgement as to whether they have written the best, or possibly the worst, poetry in the English language does not rest with me. The poems included in this volume, as in the other books in this series, were all voted for by ‘the nation’ in a television poll. While a significant proportion of the nation may have overlooked their duty in this respect, the number of people who do bother to vote is actually quite large. Large enough to pre-empt block claques and family conspiracies anyway.

The hundred or so poems promoted here are largely familiar works from acknowledged writers. Even the exciting sounding ‘The Nightmare’ by W.H. Auden turned out on closer enquiry to be the rather more familiar poem, ‘Night Mail’. We have also had to re-include some favourites from that classic of the genre, The Nation’s Favourite Poems (which was open to contenders from the entire span of human creativity).

Nonetheless, bizarrely, the nation’s favourite poem of all time, Kipling’s ‘If—’, is not the nation’s favourite modern poem of the last hundred years. Perhaps some of the nation is unaware that it was written in 1912. (This may be the same section of the nation who voted for Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘Remember’.) But then, everybody knows that ‘modern poetry’ is different from ‘poetry’. It does not rhyme or scan and tends to deal with difficult subjects, except, er, here.

Philip Larkin identified the quality of a good poem as being the capturing of a specific emotional moment. Certainly choosing your absolute single favourite poem of the last hundred years is a demanding choice and it comes as no surprise that this selection tends towards the lyrical. Here are poems which people have stored away for later use, which encapsulate feeling rather than analysis. It is not that the experiments of modern poetry have been entirely ignored: there were votes for T.S. Eliot (in reflective mood) for example. But most of the great movements and significant advances seem to have failed to lodge in the heart. No Imagists, no Concrete, no Ezra Pound, no Thom Gunn. Favourite poems seem more likely to be emotional rather than intellectual. Those sometimes-despised sentimental Georgian poets will not lie down.

If, in some circles, the twentieth century is notable mainly for breaking ground and moulds and daring innovation, the nation itself seems wholly unconvinced. Most of the poetry here would be recognisable to Palgrave. There were times, as the votes were counted, when this book threatened to be the Collected Works of Sir John Betjeman. He along with Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney jostle for top position as favourite modern poet.

W.H. Auden is well represented too, but in his less ‘coded’ work. (His film work, in fact. ‘Night Mail’ was the commentary for a documentary, and ‘Stop all the clocks’ became famous, of course, thanks to Four Weddings and a Funeral.) Our electorate seems to like a simple approach to a complex matter. I was once on a literary committee where several members vigorously attacked the distinguished Welsh poet R.S. Thomas for his ‘clichés’, by which they meant, possibly, the familiarity of his subjects and images: fields, farming, the burdens of life and so forth. But perhaps the poetry that people love and revere, ancient or modern, has always addressed itself to those familiar subjects rather better than any other literary form, and will always continue to do so.

Setting aside the appreciation of nature, there is an awful lot of loss here. Deaths of fathers figure strongly, and deaths of children and spouses too. And, of course, the contemplation of his or her own death is never far from the true poet’s mind. Birth is also celebrated; though with a certain poetic foreboding, and usually with allusions to the infant’s ultimate death.

For relief from births and deaths, you can turn to poems by Robert Graves, or Dylan Thomas. There are so many modern funny poets that it seems a pity there are not more here. Perhaps wry and detached irony does not a favourite make. Except in the case of the winning poem, of course. It was a shock to many, including, so I was told, the author, Jenny Joseph, that ‘Warning’ romped home ahead of the field. The producer had to go and look it up. (So did I, but it was the producer’s job.) Some have said that the choice had something to do with the fact that the poem has been prominently featured on a best-selling tea towel. I find books easier to take on a train, but I have read The Oxford Book of Modern English Verse and ‘Warning is certainly there, chosen by Larkin himself.

So here is a first-rate selection of some of the greatest poetry of the last hundred years. And I say that, secure in the knowledge that I did not choose these poems, the nation did. (Aspiring poets, of whatever standard, please, please read that last bit again, very carefully. Thank you.)

But having said all that, I am going to break these rules and insert a special poem that nobody voted for. The BBC commissioned a modern version of the poem ‘If— ’ to be read on television when the results of the poll were announced. It is called ‘What If’ and was written by Benjamin Zephaniah. Here it is, together with the original Rudyard Kipling poem that inspired its creation.