I have just tried to describe the project in 50 words
and then in 150 and then in keywords, and then myself in 50. Here they are:
This study treats the life of form in contemporary
innovative poetries through both a summary introduction to contemporary
theories of form, and through detailed readings of leading North American and
British innovative poets, which show their forms to be a matter of both authorial
design and readerly engagement.
This study engages questions relating to the life of form in
contemporary innovative poetries through both an introduction to the latest theories
of form that will be of interest to anyone concerned with reading for form, and
which focusses upon form as an engaged action rather than metrical frame or pattern,
and with reference to the work of Susan Wolfson and Derek Attridge. Close readings
of leading North American and British innovative poets, from Rosmarie Waldrop
to Caroline Bergvall, Sean Bonney to Barry MacSweeney, Veronica Forrest-Thomson
to Kenneth Goldsmith, Allen Fisher to Geraldine Monk, emphasise their forms to
be a matter of authorial design and readerly engagement. They cover form on the
page, form in performance, and form in physical book-making. The book ends with
a consideration of what has been implicit throughout: the politically critical
function of formal innovation, mediated through the theories of Adorno, Rancière
and others.
keywords: form; innovation; formal innovation; linguistically
innovative poetry; political form.
Robert Sheppard is a poet-critic and Professor of Poetry and
Poetics at Edge Hill University ,
UK
A guide or hub-post, to the project, with links to some of its working notes and digressions and outtakes, may be accessed here.
For those who can buy the book, or order it for libraries,
here are the places
