Home

Agenda is one of the best known and most highly respected poetry journals in the world, having been founded in 1959 by Ezra Pound and William Cookson.  Agenda comprises poetry, critical essays and reviews in general anthology issues, special issues which focus on a well-known poet, and international issues. A general selection of poems and essays also appear in each issue.

It is now edited by John Burnside at the School of English, University of St Andrews. John is continuing, as Seamus Heaney said, ‘to uphold the lofty standards of Agenda’.

“Agenda is one of the two literary periodicals in Britain. I admire it for its attentiveness to all kinds of contemporary poetry… and its consistent stress on the importance of poetry in translation from other languages.” 

Thom Gunn

“Agenda, as the title insists, does several things that need to be done if literary culture is to stay in good shape. First of all, it stimulates and sponsors new poetry by poets whose writings and espousals have given the magazine its personality from the beginning. Agenda has a second important function which it discharges by doing work of critical advocacy for poets of marked or under-rated achievement, living and dead.” 

Seamus Heaney

Agenda consistently discovers fresh, talented voices from every English-speaking continent, revives undeservedly neglected poets, and offers versions or translations of poetry – there have been Spanish, Greek, Indian, and Turkish issues in the past.

As well as general anthology issues, Special issues focus on a particular well-established poet, alive or dead (sometimes an undeservedly neglected one). There have been special issues on:

• Thomas Hardy
• T.S. Eliot
• Ezra Pound
• Robert Lowell
• William Carlos Williams
• Hugh MacDiarmid
• Kathleen Raine
• Geoffrey Hill
• David Jones
• R.S. Thomas
• Thom Gunn
• Charles Tomlinson
• Peter Dale
• Seamus Heaney
• Derek Walcott.

As Seamus Heaney said: ‘The Special issues form an indispensable contribution to the contemporary critical record’. Each Special issue includes original work by the particular poet as well as original critical essays on different aspects of his/her work.’