Agenda

Agenda was a British poetry magazine founded in 1959 by William Cookson at the instigation of Ezra Pound, and it ran for more than six decades as one of the most distinctive literary journals in English. Edited first by Cookson and later by Patricia McCarthy, it published contemporary poetry, translations and literary criticism, championed the reputations of Ezra Pound and David Jones, and maintained its own small-press imprint, Agenda Editions. After Cookson's death in 2003 the journal continued under McCarthy until a takeover by the University of St Andrews, a change of editorship and the death of John Burnside led to the University announcing the magazine's closure, ending one of the longest continuous runs in British poetry publishing.

Founding: Cookson, Pound and Brunnenburg

The idea for Agenda grew from William Cookson's visit to Brunnenburg in the Tyrol, where Ezra Pound had come to live with his daughter and son-in-law in 1958. The magazine was founded by Cookson and Pound at Pound's instigation. Pound had originally suggested that Cookson edit pages in an existing publication, but when these plans did not come to fruition, the bookseller and poet Peter Russell suggested that Cookson found his own magazine. The first issue appeared in 1959. According to the magazine's own account, the title Agenda translates as "things needing to be done" — a sense of unfinished business that would come to suit the journal's long campaigning life. At first the magazine was also linked by Cookson to politics, then, in 1962, it became mainly concerned with the publication of poetry.

The Pound years

From its inception, Agenda was Pound's journal as much as Cookson's. The editorial preoccupations of the magazine reflected Cookson's own passions, and it continued to champion Pound long after the poet's death in 1972. A "Special Issue in Honour of Ezra Pound's Eighty-Fifth Birthday" (Vol. 8, Nos. 3–4) was a significant early issue in 1970, and a special issue on "Dante, Ezra Pound and Contemporary Poetry" (Vol. 34, Nos. 3–4) was published as late as 1996. Through these landmark issues and constant critical attention, Agenda kept Pound's poetry and poetics at the centre of British literary conversation for decades, at a time when his reputation was still clouded by his wartime broadcasts for Rome Radio and the resulting treason indictment.

Championing David Jones

Cookson also used Agenda to promote the reputation of the poet and artist David Jones, devoting two major special issues to him in 1967 and 1974, in addition to articles in several other issues. Agenda Editions published several major Jones volumes, including The Kensington Mass (1975, with a photographic reproduction of the manuscript) and The Roman Quarry (1981), a full-length volume of until then unpublished material, as well as volumes of Jones's letters in 1979 and 1996. This sustained advocacy played a significant part in establishing Jones's standing as a major modernist writer, and the Agenda special issues remain essential reference points for Jones scholars.

Translation and the art of discovery

Agenda was notable for its focus upon the art of translation, bringing to English-speaking audiences poetry from other cultures that readers would not normally have access to. Recent issues included "Translation as Metamorphosis" in 2005 (Vol. 4, No. 4). The magazine's editorial policy was to promote young, talented voices through its Broadsheets and to promote new voices and undeservedly neglected voices alongside work by established poets. Agenda published early work from William Carlos Williams, Hugh MacDiarmid, Charles Tomlinson, Ted Hughes, C. H. Sisson, Geoffrey Hill, David Jones, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Jennings, Roy Fuller, Louis Zukofsky and Peter Levi, and, more recently, John Burnside and Kerry Hardie — a roll call that testifies to its editors' eye for talent.

The special issue became an Agenda hallmark. Beyond the landmark Pound and Jones editions, the journal used the format to give extended treatment to translation — "Translation as Metamorphosis" in 2005 (Vol. 4, No. 4) — and to mark occasions across decades, from the Pound 85th birthday issue of 1970 to the "Dante, Ezra Pound and Contemporary Poetry" issue of 1996, twenty-six years later. This patient, long-horizon approach to subjects, returning to the same writers and questions over decades, was characteristic of Cookson's editorship and of the magazine's confidence in its own judgement.

Editorial character

Cookson's tastes were unmistakable and unapologetic. The magazine was not subsidised by any regional arts board or arts council in its later years, though it was grateful for earlier support, and it maintained a fiercely independent editorial line. Cookson had strong views about what poetry should avoid: oversentimental, cliché-ridden verse; poetry with mechanical rhymes; work that was badly crafted or did not come from the heart. The journal's critical pages were as important as its poetry pages, and its long essays on Pound, Jones and other subjects built a body of criticism that critics and scholars have drawn on ever since. It was edited with Peter Dale and then with Patricia McCarthy, who continued to edit the journal following Cookson's death in 2003.

Agenda Editions

Agenda Editions was the journal's own publishing company and an imprint of the magazine operating as a small press. It produced small, beautifully printed, limited editions of individual poets' poems, as well as the major David Jones volumes that became its most celebrated achievement. The imprint extended Agenda's mission beyond the quarterly or periodic journal into book publishing, allowing it to champion poets at greater length than magazine issues permitted. For readers and collectors, Agenda Editions volumes — with their careful design and limited print runs — became objects of desire in their own right.

The later years under McCarthy

After William Cookson's death in 2003, Patricia McCarthy, who had edited the journal with him, continued as editor, maintaining its commitment to poetry, translation and criticism. Under her editorship the magazine retained its distinctive identity and its loyal readership, even as the economics of small-press literary publishing grew ever more difficult. In March 2023, McCarthy announced in the double issue "Stepping Stones" (vol. 55 no. 3–4) that she would be stepping down from the editorship following the journal's takeover by the University of St Andrews, and the baton of editorship was passed to John Burnside, one of the poets Agenda had championed in his early career.

Closure

Burnside's illness and death a year later meant the 2024 edition never emerged, after which the University of St Andrews announced it would close the magazine rather than recruit a new editor or cede the magazine to a new home. The closure brought to an end a run of sixty-five years — from 1959 to 2024 — making Agenda one of the longest-lived poetry journals in British literary history. The announcement was mourned by poets and critics as the loss of a publication that had shaped the reception of modernist and contemporary poetry in Britain for generations.

Legacy

Cookson's stubborn, personal editorship — "things needing to be done" — proved that a single-minded small magazine could influence the literary culture of a nation. The journal's back issues, special editions and Agenda Editions volumes remain collectible, and its story is one of the great editorial careers in twentieth-century British publishing. The magazine's own website, agendapoetry.co.uk, preserves its history in a detailed FAQ — from the Brunnenburg origins and the Pound connection to the editorial policy of promoting young and neglected voices — standing as a record of what Agenda set out to do and, across sixty-five years, achieved.