Paladin Poetry was a series of paperback books published by Grafton Books (later amalgamated into HarperCollins) under its Paladin imprint, intended to bring modernist and radical poetry before a wider audience. Its founding anthology The New British Poetry 1968-88 attempted to revive the fortunes of the modernist tradition, to correct the gender imbalance of previous anthologies and to bring a new generation of ‘Black British’ poets to prominence. The series was originally edited by writer John Muckle, then Grafton’s editorial copywriter (1985–88), and later by the London writer Iain Sinclair. Many of the Paladin Poetry books were paperback originals. The entire poetry series was pulped within months of the publication of its last titles. However, it did affect poetry readers and had a considerable influence on the output of other poetry publishers, such as Bloodaxe, Penguin, Carcanet and Salt.

Paladin Poetry titles

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Sources

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  • Gillian Allnutt, in Binary myths 2: Correspondences with Poet-Editors (Andy Brown, ed.) (Stride, 1999)
  • Charles Bernstein, My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago, 1999)
  • Richard Caddel, interviewed in Contemporary Views on the Little Magazine Scene (Wolfgang Görtschacher, Andreas Schachermayr, eds.) (University of Salzburg, 2000)
  • Elaine Jordan, in Writing: A Woman's Business : Women, Writing and the Marketplace (Judy Simons, Kate Fullbrook, eds.) (Manchester University Press, 1998)
  • Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory (Granta Books, 1997)
  • Robert Sheppard, The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and Its Discontents 1950-2000 (Liverpool University Press, 2005) p 152
  • Simon Smith interviewed in Tim Allen, Andrew Duncan (eds), Don't Start Me Talking: Interviews with Contemporary Poets (Salt Publishing, 2008)p 365