Oxford Poets is an imprint of the British poetry publisher Carcanet Press. The imprint was established in March 1999 when the founder and editor of Carcanet Press, Michael Schmidt, acquired the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

poetry list. OUP's authors had included such critically acclaimed poets as

Fleur Adcock Fleur Adcock (born 10 February 1934) is a New Zealand poet and editor, of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England. She is well-represented in New Zealand poetry anthologies, was awarded an honorary doc ...

, Joseph Brodsky, Greg Delanty,

Alice Oswald Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald (née Keen; born 31 August 1966) is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poe ...

Craig Raine Craig Anthony Raine, FRSL (born 3 December 1944) is an English contemporary poet. Along with Christopher Reid, he is a notable pioneer of Martian poetry, a movement that expresses alienation with the world, society and objects. He was a fellow o ...

, and

Jo Shapcott Jo Shapcott FRSL (born 24 March 1953, London) is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Awa ...

. Oxford University Press's decision to abandon its poetry list in November 1998 provoked a literary firestorm in the British media. Though published by Carcanet, the ''Oxford Poets'' list has retained an element of editorial independence. Two major contemporary writers, the Irish poet

Bernard O'Donoghue Bernard O'Donoghue FRSL (born 1945) is a contemporary Irish poet and academic. Early life and education Bernard O'Donoghue was born on 14 December 1945 in Cullen, County Cork, Ireland, where he lived on a farm. “My father was a terrible and ...

and the English poet, editor, and translator

David Constantine David John Constantine (born 1944) is an English poet, author and translator. Background Born in Salford, Constantine read Modern Languages at Wadham College, Oxford, and was a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, until 2000, when he became ...

currently oversee the imprint.

References

* Robert Potts, 'Neither rhyme nor reason', ''The Guardian'', 24 November 1998 * James Fenton, 'Beware the Philistines of Publishing', ''The Times'' (London), 25 November 1998 * Robin Young, 'Oxford's dead poet's society is resurrected', ''The Times'', 8 March 1999 Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom {{publishing-stub