Don’t Ask Me What I Mean is a comprehensive guide to the last fifty years of British poetry –written by the poets themselves. In this collection of short essays, published in celebration of the golden anniversary of the Poetry Book Society, the reader will find Philip Larkin writing on The Whitsun Weddings, Louis MacNeice on The Burning Perch, Paul Muldoon on the etymology of ‘quoof’, Carol Ann Duffy on difficulties with gonks and Simon Armitage on the Dead Sea scrolls – as well as rare contributions from Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Kingsley Amis, R. S. Thomas, Andrew Motion, U. A. Fanthorpe, Jo Shapcott, Geoffrey Hill, Michael Donaghy, Elizabeth Jennings and many, many others. Together these statements give an intellectually dazzling, candid and deeply personal account of a turbulent and fascinating period in -our recent literary history. They will also afford the reader a unique insight into some of the most remarkable minds of our time.

‘A sparklingly perceptive, intellectually lively, delightfully quirky and, above all, profoundly personal portrait of recent literary history’ The Times
‘The tone is by turns sheepish, apologetic, hesitant, and even mildly cantankerous. In short, this book contains some of the best and most engagingly human prose about the agonies and travails of writing poems that I have read in a long time’ Financial Times

Clare Brown was Director of the Poetry Book Society from 1996 to 2003. She is the author of The Creation Myths (2005) and Dream Laboratory (2007), both published by Bloomsbury.

Don Paterson’s most recent poetry collection, Landing Light , won the 2001 Whitbread Poetry Award, and also received the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize – making him the first poet to have won the award twice. He works as a musician and editor, teaches at the University of St Andrews, and lives in Kirriemuir, Scotland.