Lyric Cousins

Fiona Sampson is Professor of Poetry and Director of Roehampton Poetry Centre, at the University of Roehampton. She is currently the Editor of the journal Poem and from 2005-2012 she was the Editor of Poetry Review. She is a prize-winning poet and former professional musician whose works have been published in more than thirty languages. A Fellow and Council Member of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the English Association and Trustee of the Wordsworth Trust, her publications include 24 volumes of poetry, criticism and philosophy of language. She has 12 books in translation, and has received the Zlaten Prsten (Macedonia) and the Charles Angoff Award (US), and been shortlisted for the Evelyn Encelot Prize for European Women Poets. She has received the Newdigate Prize, a Cholmondeley award, a Hawthornden fellowship, Kathleen Blundell and Oppenheimer-John Downes Awards from the Society of Authors, Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils of England and Wales and various Poetry Book Society commendations, and has been shortlisted twice for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward prizes. Recent books include a new edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley for Faber (PBS Book-club Choice) and a poetry collection, Coleshill (Chatto, PBS Recommendation). The US edition of her selected poems appeared from Sheep Meadow Press in 2013.

• Introduction: A Little Conversation; 1. About Time; 2. Abstract Form; 3. Drawing the Line; 4. Chromaticism; 5. Density; 6. The Meaning of ‘Meaning’; 7. Song; 8. And Story Came Too: from Epic to Opera; 9. Closer Still: the Total Artwork; 10. The Consolations of Tradition; 11. Radical Measures; 12. Performance: the Role of the Audience.

engaging, beguiling, multifaceted work...