There is a sense of apocalyptic meltdown and of some visionary power that would reclaim language as both a place of and a means of accessing energy and mystery. In this sense, these are texts that need to be read aloud so that the reader is literally speaking their many tongues. My third and final poet is Harriet Tarlo. This makes a powerful contrast with what is popularly called 'nature poetry'. There is no assumption that the scene before the poet can be rationalized either in terms of the 'beautiful' or as 'nature red in tooth and claw'.
Nature here is a play of impersonal forces in which the human has to struggle for a place.
The work anthologized in Foil is neither 'easy' nor easily consumable under the category 'poetry', but it is writing in which challenge and reward are present in equal measure. The challenges and rewards of Foil derive in large part from the different ways its 33 poets treat the page and the text as a means of 'being in language' and thereby make the reader rethink what is meant by the category 'poetry'. Perhaps Foil is ushering in the age of the anti-anthology. The writers in Nicholas Johnson's 'disparate gathering' are largely inaccessible even to interested readers in the UK which means that they are likely to be completely unknown to readers beyond its shores. This makes Foil an essential purchase wherever you live and read.