the mind of the mature poet

"[T]he mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of 'personality', not being necessarily more interesting, or having 'more to say', but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations."

t.s. eliot (St. Louis, MO, USA, 1888-London, England, 1965), excerpt from Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), as quoted in Mrs Dalloway and the Feminist Revision of Male Modernism, by Merry M. Pawlowski, published as an introduction to Virgina Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Wordsworth Editions, Hertfordshire, 2003


Further reading:

Tradition and the Individual Talent (Bartleby.com)

final weeks for 2011 poetry submissions

Our reading period is coming to an end. Deadline for 2011 is December 15th. Materials sent after this date will not be considered until the Young British Poets staff resumes poetry reviews on February 1st, 2012.

Want to submit? Please read our guidelines here.


kevin bacon
Editor, YBP

Slightly Foxed Young Writers’ Competition

If you enjoy writing about the books you love, then this is a great opportunity to get your work noticed. Slightly Foxed, "the real reader's quarterly", is calling all young writers to participate in its Young Writers’ Competition. The magazine covers all genres of fiction and non-fiction, including poetry and short story collections, and the books it features aren’t latest publications or big sellers. "We’re interested in books that have somehow slipped from notice but which have meant something to the people who write about them", they say.
Entries should be submitted in Microsoft Word format to youngwriters@foxedquarterly.com until January 15th, 2012. Read the full competition guidelines here.

First prize: winner receives £ 250 and is granted the publication of the winning article in Slightly Foxed, Summer 2012, plus a one-year subscription, a Slightly Foxed book bag and The Chambers Dictionary, 12th edition

Deadline: January 15th, 2012