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While the conventional view used to be that in the 1960s and 70s ‘very little – in England at any rate – seemed to be happening’, the British Poetry Revival, in editor and poet Ken Edwards’ words, constituted “an exciting growth and flowering that encompasses an immense variety of forms and procedures”. It was an all-out attack on the literary establishment and the urbane self-assurance of the Movement poets, in particular. Against their common-sense transparency and ironic stance, poets as diverse as Lee Harwood, Tom Raworth, Roy Fisher, or Wendy Mulford and Denise Riley tried to establish new experimental modes in English poetry. They were mostly politically ‘Underground’ and aesthetically radical, breaking with narrative cohesion, thematic unity, and metrical conformity, often including highly performative approaches.
In paradigmatic readings of a range of poets associated with the British Poetry Revival, the seminar aims at coming to terms with a decidedly new and often difficult poetry that is aesthetically, epistemologically and politically challenging. We will also trace how this writing evolved in and through new kinds of poetic networks, the founding of a remarkable number of small presses and magazines and poetical happenings that dissolved the boundaries of the text in plurimedial performances.
Please be aware that this course is designed as a weekly three-hour class, instead of the more usual rhythm of a weekly seminar and a reading course in alternating weeks. |
