Mapping the Future: The Complete Works

Mapping the Futureoffers new work by all 30 writers supported byThe Complete Works project, including Warsan Shire, Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Roger Robinson, Inua Ellams, Malika Booker, Sarah Howe, Will Harris, Kayo Chingonyi, Jay Bernard, Yomi Sode and Karen McCarthy Woolf. In 2008 the level of poets of colour published by major presses in the UK was less than 1%. By 2020 it was over 20%. The Complete Works Poetry an initiative spearheaded by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo played a significant role in this change.Supporting 30 poets over a twelve-year period, The Complete Works produced an unprecedented number of prizewinners, including the Forward Prizes, T.S. Eliot Prize, Ted Hughes Award, Somerset Maugham Award, Dylan Thomas Prize, Rathbones Folio Prize andSunday Times The Complete Works has become the most successful collective ever formed in British poetry. Mapping the Future is not just a magnificent anthology of some of the best UK poets, it is also an exploration on how poetry in Britain has become much more inclusive over the past 15 years: what has been won, and what is still being fought for. As well as poetry, theanthology also includes fierce essays re-drawing the map of British poetry by 10 of the 30 poets, touching on the most significant topics of our time.This anthology offers a timely insight into British poetry and how the voice of the 'other' continues to take centre-stage in pivotal times. Mapping the Future is edited by poet Karen McCarthy Woolf, editor of the second two Ten anthologies in The Complete Works series, with Dr Nathalie Teitler, director of The Complete Works, with a foreword by Bernardine Evaristo. 'Mapping the Future is a groundbreaking anthology of poetry and original essays offering fresh and daring literary perspectives from a new generation of outstanding British poets. It represents a landmark moment in the history of poetry.' - Bernardine Evaristo

Table of Contents:
9 Foreword by Bernardine Evaristo 12 Introduction by Nathalie Teitler 18 Preface by Karen McCarthy Woolf ROUND 3 Raymond Antrobus 25 The Perseverance 27 Horror Scene as Black English Royal (Captioned) Leo Boix 29 A Latin American Sonnet 29 A Latin American Sonnet III 30 Eucalyptus Omikemi Natacha Bryan 32 Sirens 33 Home Victoria Adukwei Bulley 35 Declaration 36 Pandemic vs. Black Folk 37 Dreaming is a Form of Knowledge Production Will Harris 39 ‘In June, outrageous stood the flagons…’ 40 The Seven Dreams of Richard Spencer 42 Scene Change 44 ‘Take the origin of banal…’ Ian Humphreys 47 The grasshopper warbler’s song 48 Swifts and the Awakening City 50 The wood warbler’s song Momtaza Mehri 52 Fledglings 54 I AM BRINGING THE HISTORY OF THE KITCHEN SINK INTO OUR BEDROOM AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME 55 Imperatives Yomi Ṣode 57 Exhibition 2.0 59 12:05 in North London, Thinking about Kingsley Smith 60 An Ode to Bruv, Ting, Fam and, on Occasion, Cuz & My Man Degna Stone 63 Walltown Crags 63 Proof of Life on Earth 65 over {prep., adv} Jennifer Lee Tsai 67 About Chinese Women 71 The Yellow Woman ROUND 2 Mona Arshi 75 Yellows 76 February 78 Arrivals 79 from My Little Sequence of Ugliness 80 from The Book of Hurts Jay Bernard 82 Clearing Kayo Chingonyi 86 Kumukanda 86 The Colour of James Brown’s Scream 87 Nyaminyami: ‘water can crash and water can flow’ 88 Nyaminyami: epilogue Rishi Dastidar 90 The Brexit Book of the Dead 91 Time takes a moment 92 Neptune’s concrete crash helmet Edward Doegar 94 from The English Lyric I 94 from The English Lyric II 95 After After Remainder Inua Ellams 97 from The Half God of Rainfall (Act One, Book I) Sarah Howe 102 Sometimes I think 103 Relativity 104 from In the Chinese Ceramics Gallery Adam Lowe 109 Gingerella’s Date 111 Elegy for the Latter-day Teen Wilderness Years 112 Reynardine for Red Eileen Pun 115 Studio Apartment: Eyrie 116 Longways / Crosswise Warsan Shire 120 Backwards ROUND 1 Rowyda Amin 125 Genius Loci 125 We Go Wandering at Night and Are Consumed by Fire Malika Booker 130 My Ghost in the Witness Stand Janet Kofi-Tsekpo 135 Yellow Iris 136 Streets 136 The Wilton Diptych Mir Mahfuz Ali 138 Isn’t 139 My Salma Nick Makoha 142 Hollywood Africans 143 Mecca 144 JFK Shazea Quraishi 147 The Taxidermist attends to her work 149 In the Branches of your Voice Roger Robinson 152 Halibun for the Onlookers 153 Woke 153 Lisbon 154 Returnee 155 Blood Denise Saul 157 The Room Between Us 158 A Daughter’s Perspective 159 Stone Altar 160 Golden Grove Seni Seneviratne 162 Lightkeeping 163 The Devil’s Rope 164 The Weight of the World Karen McCarthy Woolf 166 Excerpts from Un/Safe ESSAYS Raymond Antrobus 173 Bird Song and Resonance Mona Arshi 179 Writing through a Pandemic Leo Boix 185 Multilingual Writing and Translation: A Poetics of Resistance Jay Bernard 190 Manifesto: Stranger in the archives Malika Booker 194 She Will Name Herself Ghost: She Will Haul Up a Poetic Courtroom and There Shall Be a Reckoning Rishi Dastidar 205 Wanted: a screwball poetics. On why we should try to find comedy in poetry Will Harris 216 Bad Dreams Nick Makoha 218 The Black Metic Momtaza Mehri 224 An Emptying: A Gathering Karen McCarthy Woolf 228 It is lovely when…Diaspora poetics & the zuihitsu Inua Ellams 239 On time, money and music 246 Acknowledgements

About the Author :
Karen McCarthy Woolf is the author of two poetry collections and the editor of seven literary anthologies. Her debut collectionAn Aviary of Small Birds(Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis and Jerwood Prizes, and was an Observer Book of the Year. Her second, Seasonal Disturbances (Carcanet, 2017), was a winner in the inaugural Laurel Prize for ecological poetry. In 2019 she moved to Los Angeles as a Fulbright postdoctoral scholar and Writer in Residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA exploring the relationship between poetry, law and the impacts of capitalism on black, brown and indigenous bodies. After returning to the UK, 2021 took her to Brazil as an artist in residence at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia where she was researching new work that explores sugar and its cultural and material legacies. Nathalie Teitler works across the fields of arts, activism and academia. Born in Buenos Aires, she holds a PhD in Latin American Poetry (King's College London, 2000). She has run literature programmes promoting diversity in the UK for over 20 years, founding the first national mentoring and translation programmes for writers living in exile, and is the Director of The Complete Works. In 2015 she founded the world's first poetry-dance company, Dancing Words, which produces live pieces and films which have been shown at festivals around the world.She was appointed Projects Manager for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2018, and has been a director of Bloodaxe Books since 2021.

Review :
"Mapping the Future is a groundbreaking anthology of poetry and original essays offering fresh and daring literary perspectives from a new generation of outstanding British poets. It represents a landmark moment in the history of poetry."--Bernardine Evaristo 'Established by Bernardine Evaristo, The Complete Works is the most transformative poetry collective ever; in 2008 the number of poets of colour published by major presses was 1%, by 2020 it was 20%. This book represents this seismic shift, with new work by poets including Raymond Antrobus, Warsan Shire and Jay Bernard.' - Chris McCabe, Librarian, National Poetry Library, in The Bookseller (Autumn 2023 Highlights) 'The year also saw three noteworthy anthologies ... Mapping the Future (Bloodaxe), edited by Nathalie Teitler and Karen McCarthy Woolf, brings together poems and essays from the 30 graduates of the Complete Works, the programme that did so much to bring recognition to British-based poets of colour such as Malika Booker and Roger Robinson.' - Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian (Best poetry books of 2023) 'This generous anthology marks 15 years of the transformative project founded by Bernardine Evaristo and directed by Nathalie Teitler, which has been rocket fuel for work by British poets of majority global heritage ... The 30 Complete Works fellows comprise a roster of some of the most influential voices in the UK today... This volume demonstrates again how visionary that programme of mentorship and real-world opportunities was. There's a breathtaking variety of poetics ... read this for excitement, inspiration, and also to map, as Eileen Pun puts it, "How thought becomes manifest, how the I / continually tries every variation of light".' - Fiona Sampson, The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Month) 'A landmark text in British poetry, Mapping the Future reunites the thirty fellows of The Complete Works - a who's who of contemporary British poetry - with selections of new poetic and critical writing. Where the original [TEN] anthologies foregrounded novelty, here are those same artists in full artistic maturity, with conviction and force behind their ambitions, curiosities, solidarities and visions.' - Oluwaseun S. Olayiwola, Poetry Book Society Winter Bulletin 2023 'The 30 Black and Asian poets in this anthology, among Britain's leading new generation of poets, were on a mentoring scheme I founded for poets of colour called Complete Works (2007-2017), when under 1% of poetry books in the UK were by poets of colour. By 2020, it was over 20%. It is testament to the power of inclusion initiatives to reinvigorate art forms with new voices and fresh perspectives.' - Bernardine Evaristo, Service 95 (5 Modern Poets to Note), on Mapping the Future