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Astley, Neil

(ed.): Staying Alive; Being Alive, [31] 7

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20110901172539 Laurence Scott on Neil Astley, Daniel Macklin, Slightly Foxed Issue 31

The Return of Grouse

Laurence Scott on Neil Astley (ed.), Staying Alive and Being Alive

An upstairs room in a north London public library. I was teaching ‘Introduction to Contemporary Poetry’ to a class of twelve adults, and we’d been going for about twenty minutes. They were all new to poetry, no one wanted to talk, and the atmosphere was sticky. I thumbed Staying Alive – real poems for unreal times, the anthology I use as a set text, and it fell open at Seamus Heaney’s ‘Postscript’. I asked if anyone would like to read it aloud. Doreen mustered her confidence, cleared her throat, and kindly volunteered.

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