Authors:
- Offers a rigorous reading and introduction to a range of formally innovative poetry in the contemporary North American and British context
- Considers innovative formal qualities in connection to a range of topics including translation, performance, and conceptual poetry
- Investigates the connections between formal experimentation and contemporary realities through readings of poets such as Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Kenneth Goldsmith, Rosemarie Waldrop and others.
Part of the book series: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics (MPCC)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This study engages the life of form in contemporary innovative poetries through both an introduction to the latest theories and close readings of leading North American and British innovative poets. The critical approach derives from Robert Sheppard’s axiomatic contention that poetry is the investigation of complex contemporary realities through the means (meanings) of form. Analyzing the poetry of Rosmarie Waldrop, Caroline Bergval, Sean Bonney, Barry MacSweeney, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Kenneth Goldsmith, Allen Fisher, and Geraldine Monk, Sheppard argues that their forms are a matter of authorial design and readerly engagement.
Reviews
“Form matters. Robert Sheppard shows not only how but why that is in some of the most challenging and inventive poems of the time (and with a specific focus on British poetry). The Meaning of Form in Innovative Contemporary Poetry is a descriptive catalogue of the state of poetry today that opens up to the possibilities of the poetry of tomorrow.” (Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, USA)
“This book is an informed and subtle intervention in current theoretical debates about form in poetry by one of the leading critics of contemporary British innovative poetry. Engaging with areas of poetry not normally included in such theoretical discussions, Robert Sheppard shows that they have a precise relevance to these debates. A significant contribution to the aesthetic turn in contemporary criticism, and a necessary work for anyone interested in contemporary British poetry.” (Robert Hampson FEA, FRSA, Professor of Modern Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
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Department of English, History and Creative Writing, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, United Kingdom
Robert Sheppard
About the author
Robert Sheppard is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University, UK, and a poet-critic. He is the author of History or Sleep: Selected Poems, The Poetry of Saying, a monograph on Iain Sinclair, and is the editor of an essay collection on Lee Harwood.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Meaning of Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry
Authors: Robert Sheppard
Series Title: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34045-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-34044-9Published: 09 September 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-81664-7Published: 22 April 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-34045-6Published: 05 October 2016
Series ISSN: 2634-6052
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6060
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 248
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Poetry and Poetics, Literary Theory, Contemporary Literature, British and Irish Literature, North American Literature