FOR anyone unexcited by the news that the Forward prize for the best first collection has just been given to a book of poems about playing Super Mario, four important new books of poetry about things that matter might stir the spirits.

As Rob Walton puts it in the collection Release a Rage of Red (Culture Matters, £5): “Write poems on the tins you put in the foodbank/Write verse about how foodbank even became a word/Write about alternatives to foodbanks… Write about writing a Closed sign on the last foodbank.”

The collection is the third anthology of entries to the annual Unite-sponsored Bread and Roses award. Edited by Mike Quille, the book is a furious reply to the insular and trivial narcissism of so much of the contemporary British poetry scene.