Fiona Sampson leaves poetry review

The editor of Poetry Review, Fiona Sampson, has decided to leave the Poetry Society in order to further develop her career in other directions. Fiona Sampson is a very successful poet, prose writer and critic and is in great demand as a reader of her work, a teacher and lecturer, and as a judge of poetry competitions. Fiona Sampson was appointed editor of Poetry Review in March 2005. She immediately developed the magazine in several distinctive ways and she has maintained this distinctiveness throughout her editorship. In particular each issue has a theme to which some of the poetry and prose relates, so that items illuminate each other, presenting aspects of the theme in a fresh and satisfying way. Each issue includes a range of new poems by established, mid-career and newly published poets and, more than any previous editor, Fiona Sampson has made a feature of poetry in translation. Through individual poems, selections of poems and surveys of poetry in particular countries, she has significantly extended the international dimension of Poetry Review. Each issue contains a number of prose articles, grouped together as the Centrefold feature. Typically these discuss the theory and practice of poetry writing and have often included some of the most important writing about these topics published since 2005. Fiona Sampson has maintained and extended the inclusiveness and high quality of the reviews for which Poetry Review has always been known and most issues end with Endpapers – a lively selection of short pieces from various sources including letters to the editor, prize-winning poems or poems from the past and a thoughtful editorial. In 2009 Fiona Sampson edited A Century of Poetry Review which surveyed the journal’s history since its foundation and provided a substantial anthology of poems and prose published in it since inception. Both the introduction which recounts the history of Poetry Review with tact and clarity and the selection of work make the book a very fitting and enjoyable account of the Society’s journal in its first hundred years. Throughout her time with Poetry Review, Fiona Sampson has been a committed and professional editor who has produced a series of issues which both maintain and extend the Society’s position as the leading national organisation for poetry in Britain. The Board of Trustees wishes her every success in her future career. The spring issue of Poetry Review will be published on 29 March, featuring the winning entries in the National Poetry Competition as well as work by poets and critics including Robin Robertson, Marilyn Hacker, David Morley, Anne Stevenson, and Ahren Warner.