Contemporary British and Irish Poetry

Edited by Samuel Rogers

Yearbook of English Studies 51

Modern Humanities Research Association

16 November 2021

ISBN: 978-1-839542-35-0 (paperback)

Access online: At JSTOR

ContemporaryEnglishPoetry


The Yearbook of English Studies for 2021 examines contemporary poetry from Britain and Ireland. Edited by Samuel Rogers, the volume contains fourteen essays exploring a range of poetry from 1980 and the present. Poetry continues to be a dynamic cultural force, though the past four decades have seen recurrent debates over whether its readership is shrinking or swelling. Certainly, the digital age has reshaped our relationship with media, altering both the publishing world and the economies of attention. Is poetry anachronistic, or has its condensed nature allowed it to thrive? Since we are still living it, contemporary poetry resists being surveyed from any detached perspective. This volume instead looks in depth at a range of poets, illustrating some diverse possibilities for poetic energy. A handful of senior poets are discussed, and the impact of their late work appraised. However, the dominant concern is with poets who began publishing since 1980.

The volume is organized into four sections. ‘Place, Identity, Environment’ contains discussions of Tony Conran, Raman Mundair, Geoffrey Hill, and Karen McCarthy Woolf. Attention is paid to questions of nationhood, cultural identity and ethnicity, the ethics of attention, and the pressing matter of climate change. In the second section, ‘Placing Language’, Rhys Trimble, Lesley Harrison, and Tom Pickard are compared; Gaelic poetry is explored via Meg Bateman, Ruaraidh MacThòmais, Rody Gorman, and others; an analysis of Catherine Walsh further underlines the connections to place afforded by language.

The third section, ‘Ways of Looking Back’, mediates between the contemporary and the past. This includes classical presences in Alice Oswald, parodic responses to Philip Larkin, and a consideration of the late Eavan Boland’s legacy. A fourth section showcases some of poetry’s ‘Forms of Meaning’. Redell Olsen’s cross media lineage is traced to Sophie Robinson, Nisha Ramayya, and others. Ted Hughes is revisited via the epistolary tradition. Literary collaboration is approached through Kelvin Corcoran, Alan Halsey, S. J. Fowler, Prudence Chamberlain, and Camilla Nelson. Finally, the complications of the contemporary lyric are examined in Zoë Skoulding’s work.

Samuel Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in English at UWE Bristol. He is Co-Editor of the English section of the Modern Language Review.

Contents:

1-8

Introduction: Situating Contemporary Poetry
Samuel Rogers
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0001

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11-30

‘where we put our suffering’: Tony Conran's Elegiac Modernism
Daniel Hughes
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0011

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31-43

Where Are You Really From? Raman Mundair's Poetic Resistance to Asian-British Cultural Objectification
Devon Campbell-Hall
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0031

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44-61

‘All things in flux, yet attending’: Nature and Attention in Late Geoffrey Hill
Bridget Vincent
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0044

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62-81

Seasonal Disturbances: Environment, Climate Change, and Anthropocene Poetics of Relation in Karen McCarthy Woolf's Poetry
Yvonne Reddick
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0062

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85-104

Making Your Mark: Ecologies of Language
Ian Davidson
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0085

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105-123

“s na cnàmhan gu bhith ris | a-nis' [and the bones almost showing through | now]: Reading Contemporary Gaelic Poetry
Peter Mackay
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0105

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124-135

Catherine Walsh's Algebra
Robert Kiely
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0124

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139-161

‘the water is in my thinking now’: Alice Oswald, Poikilomēsis and Classical Presences
Sarah Kennedy
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0139

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162-182

Getting Up-fucked: Charting Philip Larkin's Legacy in Parodies and Para-poems
Rory Waterman
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0162

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183-204

Ireland, Influence, and Idealism: Eavan Boland and the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nicholas Taylor-Collins
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0183

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207-228

An Expanded Poetic Practice: Some Contemporary Innovative Women Poets
Robert Hampson
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0207

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229-246

‘An illegal private transaction’: Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters and Epistolarity
James Underwood
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0229

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247-264

Doubling Up: Modes of Literary Collaboration in Contemporary British Innovative Poetry
Robert Sheppard
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0247

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265-286

Wires, Mirrors, Tricks of the Light: Zoë Skoulding and Lyric Poetry
Samuel Rogers
doi:10.5699/yearenglstud.51.2021.0265

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Bibliography entry:

Rogers, Samuel (ed.), Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (= Yearbook of English Studies, 51.1 (2021))

First footnote reference: 35 Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, ed. by Samuel Rogers (= Yearbook of English Studies, 51.1 (2021)), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Rogers, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Rogers, Samuel (ed.). 2021. Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (= Yearbook of English Studies, 51.1)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Rogers 2021: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Rogers 2021: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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