Stop Sharpening Your Knives So I Can Think For A Second is a collection by eight young poets who met in Norwich in 2004.
It was conceived and edited by Sam Riviere and Jack Underwood, nocturnally, on a diet of strong tea, biscuits and cigarettes. The cover art is the work of Oliver Beavis, and a foreword was generously provided by George Szirtes, winner of the TS Eliot Prize (2005) and all-round poetry hero.
The awkwardly titled anthology was launched on Thursday 27th October 2005 at what was then called The Lounge on St Benedicts Street, Norwich, where there was music, self-congratulatory conversation, flirting, and a selection of short readings by the contributors.
S.S.Y.K.(1) is priced at a more than reasonable £3 (incl. p&p) for 40 pages of poems about, among other things, cupcakes, astral projection, publishing, call centres, gameshows, suburban decay, pillow fights, god(s), traffic accidents, dead animals, electroshock treatment, housesitting, derelict chateaus, ice cream, razors and crosswords.
“...reading these eight sophisticated poets it is evident that the pastoral or nature red-in-tooth-and-claw poem is no longer a touchstone for emerging talent. The poems here provide a reality check on what has long been no more than poetic self-delusion.”
James Sutherland-Smith
“There is a craft, an intensity of purpose, a sense of the life beyond and through language that makes them unusual...What the poets have in common is skill, grace, precision, great refinement of hearing and intelligence...They understand how much words matter: how they vanish in the air leaving potentially memorable shapes.”
George Szirtes
