A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015

A comprehensive and scholarly review of contemporary British and Irish Poetry

With contributions from noted scholars in the field, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a collection of writings from a diverse group of experts. They explore the richness of individual poets, genres, forms, techniques, traditions, concerns, and institutions that comprise these two distinct but interrelated national poetries.

Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companion to Literature and Culture series, this book contains a comprehensive survey of the most important contemporary Irish and British poetry. The contributors provide new perspectives and positions on the topic. This important book:

• Explores the institutions, histories, and receptions of contemporary Irish and British poetry
• Contains contributions from leading scholars of British and Irish poetry
• Includes an analysis of the most prominent Irish and British poets
• Puts contemporary Irish and British poetry in context

Written for students and academics of contemporary poetry, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a comprehensive review of contemporary poetry from a wide range of diverse contributors.

Wolfgang Görtschacher is Senior Assistant Professor at the University of Salzburg, where he has taught literary criticism and translation studies since the early 1990s. He has published widely on British poetry magazines, contemporary British and Irish literature, and translation studies. His translations of German poetry into English and English poetry into German have been published in Europe, the UK, and the USA. He is the owner-director of the small press Poetry Salzburg, editor of the little magazine Poetry Salzburg Review, co-editor of the academic journal Moderne Sprachen, and president of AAUTE (Austrian Association of University Teachers of English).

David Malcolm is a professor of English at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. He previously taught for twenty-eight years at the University of Gdańsk. He has published extensively on British and Irish fiction and poetry. His translations of Polish and German literature have been published in Europe, the UK, and the USA. He is co-organizer of the Between.Pomiędzy Festival of Literature and Theatre which has been held annually in Sopot, Poland, since 2010.

Contributors’ Notes

Preface

Section 1 Introduction – 1960-2015: A Brief Overview of the Verse

Wolfgang Görtschacher and David Malcolm

Section 2 Contexts, Forms, Topics, and Movements

a. Institutions, Histories, Receptions

1. Some Institutions of the British and Irish (Sub)Fields of Poetry: Little Magazines, Publishers, Prizes, and Poetry in Translation

Wolfgang Görtschacher

2. Anthologies: Distortions and Corrections, Poetries, and Voices

David Kennedy

3. Minding the Trench: The Reception of British and Irish Poetry in America, 1960-2015

Daniel Bourne

4. Readers: Who Reads Modern Poetry?

Juha Virtanen

b. Genre, Kind, Technique

1. Manifestos and Poetics/Poets on Writing

Daniel Weston

2. The Genres of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry

Gareth Farmer

3. The Elegy

Stephen Regan

4. The Sonnet

David Fuller

5. Free Verse and Open Form

Lacy Rumsey

6. Satire

David Wheatley

7. The Traditional Short Lyric Poem in Britain and Ireland, 1960-2010

Tim Liardet and Jennifer Militello

8. (Post)Modern Lyric Poetry

Alex Perstell

9. The Long Poem after Pound

Will May

c. Groupings, Themes

1. Generations

Robert Hampson

2. The Movement

David Malcolm

3. The Liverpool Poets

Ludmiła Gruszewska Blaim

4. The British Poetry Revival

Robert Sheppard

5. Poets of Ulster

Martin Ryle

6. Martians: Towards a Poetics of Wonder

Małgorzata Grzegorzewska

7. Linguistically Innovative Poetry in the 1980s and 1990s

Scott Thurston

8. Concrete and Performance Poetry

Jerzy Jarniewicz

9. Performances of Technology as Compositional Practice in British and Irish Contemporary Poetry

John Sparrow

10. “Here to Stay”: Black British Poetry and the post–WWII United Kingdom

Bartosz Wójcik

11. Anglo-Jewish Poetry

David Malcolm

12. Gay and Lesbian Poetry

Prudence Chamberlain

13. Women Poets in the British Isles

Marc Porée

14. Irish Women Poets

Monika Szuba

15. Religious Poetry, 1960-2015

Hugh Dunkerley

16. Love Poetry

Eleanor Spencer

17. Political Poetry

Ian Davidson and Jo Lindsay Walton

18. Radical Landscape Poetry in Scotland

Alan Riach

19. Coincidentia Oppositorum: Myth in Contemporary Poetry

Erik Martiny

d. The Past and Other Countries

1. History and Poetry

Jerzy Jarniewicz

2. British and Irish Poets Abroad/in Exile

Glyn Pursglove

Section 3 Poets and Poems: Canon, Off-Canon, Non-Canon

3.1 John Agard - Ralf Hertel

3.2 Eavan Boland - Peter Hühn

3.3 Paul Durcan - Jessika Köhler

3.4 James Fenton - David Malcolm

3.5 Bill Griffiths - Ian Davidson

3.6 Excluding Visions of Life in Poems by Thom Gunn - Tomasz Wisniewski

3. 7 “Now Put It Together”: Lee Harwood and the Gentle Art of Collage - Robert Sheppard

3.8 Listening to Words and Silence: The Poetry of Elizabeth Jennings - Jean Ward

3.9 “Forever in excess”: Barry MacSweeney, Consumerism, and Popular Culture - Paul Batchelor

3.10 When Understanding Breaks in Waves: Voices and Messages in Edwin Morgan’s Poetry - Monika Kocot

3.11 Grace Nichols - Pilar Sánchez Calle

3.12 F. T. Prince - Will May

3.13 Kathleen Raine - Glyn Pursglove

3.14 “Everything except justice is an impertinence”: The Poetry of Peter Riley - Peter Hughes

3.15 Anne Stevenson - Eleanor Spencer

3.16 Paula Meehan – Vocal Cartographies: Public and Private

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