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Where were you when Yank poetess Sylvia Plath gassed herself in her London kitchen at the age of thirty in the harsh winter of 1963? Not maybe the stuff our memories are made from, but all that would change. There’s a distinct revival worldwide of interest in poetry and poets. This is voiced in the increased acquisition of poetry books anthologies and works by individual poets in the new and secondhand book markets.

The Net permits the debate and publication of poetry in a way formerly not possible considering the uneconomic nature of the physical publishing poetry and publishing critiques, both newbie and educational. The loud and materialistic eighties predated the superb and frightened nineties. Now here we are here in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, more sober and reflective, puzzling over where the world is going.

Out of this a generation is rising a present-day version of the sixty’s and seventy’s dreamers and idealists. There’s a return to significant intellectual examination and religious actualization. And by heavy I do not mean low in humor. I am talking about intellectual acuity (take the works of travel poet Bill Bryson for example) compared to stupid ranting (say the books of creative conspiracy theoretician David Icke).

Bryson is funny and keen while Icke is obtuse and ridiculous. We are heading away from puny thoughts to profundity. Can there be any reason other than this when a 17-year-old youth enters our bookshop asking for the entire Works of Byron, or when a blonde girl no older than fifteen claims she is looking for the poems of Shelley? In 10 years of book-selling this has never occurred before. All of a sudden we are purchasing poetry books again to meet demand, and retrieving the slim poetry books we demoted to boxes in the basement, to make a special poetry section.

This sounds right of the resurrection of interest in the sixties ballad-poets: Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez. Once more Bob Dylan is chatting with the recent generation.

The requirement for the work of Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran can hardly be met. There’s replenished interest in the war poets and supposed world poetry: the Senegalese, Thai, French and Swedish poets, and why not? It is possible as the books are available and cheap, thanks to the global online book-buying market and the replenished interest in poetic thought. Can a rediscovery of Shakespeare’s sonnets and Milton’s Nirvana Lost be far off? Horde any old poetry books and poetry anthologies you have. You might catch your youngsters reading them one day in a way you never did.

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