The new editor of Poetry Review has been named as award-winning Irish poet Maurice Riordan. He will take up the role later in the year, beginning with the autumn issue of the magazine, which will be published in September 2013. Riordan is the successor to Fiona Sampson, who quit as Poetry Review editor almost a year ago, after turmoil at the Poetry Society the previous summer. There has been a series of guest editors since her departure. Sampson now edits POEM magazine, launched last month.   

Riordan said: “It’s a good moment for poetry now the century is gathering pace. I sense a disturbing and creative energy in the air, alongside the vast new reach of our science and technologies. I’d want to plug in to that – and also to re-establish links with what’s happening in poetry elsewhere, initially in North America.”

He is a former editor of Poetry London (2005-09), and is currently professor of poetry at Sheffield Hallam University. Riordan’s poetry collections include A Word from the Loki (1995), a Poetry Book Society choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize; and Floods (2000), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread poetry award. The Holy Land won the 2007 Michael Hartnett award. A new collection, The Water Stealer, will be published this year.

Guest editors Moniza Alvi and Esther Morgan are producing the spring issue of the magazine, to be published at the end of March. The summer 2013 issue of Poetry Review will be guest-edited by Patrick McGuinness.

PHOTOGRAPH: DEREK ADAMS