"Agenda"

"Agenda" was established in 1959 by William Cookson in response to a suggestion by Ezra Pound. Cookson combines a committment to contemporary work with special issues reappraising some of the crucial figures in Modernism: Pound, MacDiarmid and David Jones. He has kept an eye on the classics, and on the Moderns in languages other than English - notably Cocteau, Mandelshtham and Ungaretti. For Cookson, the legacy of Modernism is vital; he sees it as not having been displaced by reaction or the postmodern but remaining a challenge in the present. Among the poets included in "Agenda" are Geoffrey Hill, Donald Davie, C.H. Sisson, Seamus Heaney, R.S. Thomas and Tom Scott. This anthology is divided into antecedents, modern poetry, criticism, memoirs and polemics.