“It may be going too far to call this a ‘golden age’ for poetry, as this year’s Forward judges have done, but most of the poets jostling for these prizes do seem to be reaching for a readership beyond the seminar room. Sales of particular volumes may often be counted in the hundreds rather than thousands, but poetry does escape to what Milton called a ‘fit audience, though few’. Free, unlike novelists, to be as recondite as they wish, they have surprising taste for accessibility. It might surprise traditionalists to find a common interest in poetry’s formal polish and patterning, even rhyme and scansion. So what preoccupies the nation’s poets – aside from obtaining the university posts teaching creative writing that now sustain many of them?”