Devices and Desires

A companion volume to the earlier Dynamic Memory: the long poem and the poetics of autobiography, this work contains more detail on Basil Bunting's Briggflatts (1966), Derek Walcott's Omeros (1990) and Barry MacSweeney's The Book of Demons (1997). Written from the margins and spanning the twentieth century, these poems chart the shifts in literary style across a period of rapid historical change. After his travels, Bunting returned to Northumberland where he wrote the high Modernist poem which brought acclaim. Walcott's poetry has crossed the Atlantic, from its postcolonial roots in St. Lucia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and, aged 80, received the T.S.Eliot Award in 2010. MacSweeney, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, wrote in a poem: 'I am the nightmare' and his book is a stirring example of the late twentieth century confessional avant-garde, published shortly before alcoholism took his life at the 52. These very different poems are chosen in homage to the outstanding poetic address shown by their writers. Students of poetry will find here a wealth of informed comment ranging across the width of the literary canon.