Meaning of Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry

Robert Sheppard is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University, UK, and a poet-critic. He is the author of History or Sleep: Selected Poems, The Poetry of Saying, a monograph on Iain Sinclair, and is the editor of an essay collection on Lee Harwood.

• Preface.- Introduction: Form, Forms and Forming.- 1. Veronica Forrest-Thomson: Poetic Artifice and Naturalization in Theory and Practice.- 2.  Convention and Constraint: Form in the Innovative Sonnet Sequence.- 3. Translation as Transformation: Tim Atkins’ and Peter Hughes’ Petrarch.- 4. Meddling the Medieval: Caroline Bergvall and Erín Moure.- 5. Translation as Occupation: Simon Perril and Sean Bonney.- 6. Rosmarie Waldrop: Poetics, Wild Forms and Palimpsest Prose.- 7. The Trace of Poetry and the Non-Poetic: Conceptual Writing and Appropriation in Kenneth Goldsmith, Vanessa Place and John Seed.- 8. Stefan Themerson: Iconopoeia and Thought-Experiments in the Theater of Semantic Poetry.- 9. The Making of the Book: Bill Griffiths and Allen Fisher.- 10. Geraldine Monk’s Poetics and Performance: Catching Form in the Act.- 11. Form and the Antagonisms of Reality: Barry MacSweeney’s Sin Signs.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.

“The Meaning of Form is a noble and necessary part of the enterprise of taking us closer to the complex dynamics of the characteristics and operations of poetic form. … this book offers powerful smelling salts to jolt us back to a present of attentive concentration on form.” (Gareth Farmer, Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, Vol. 10 (1), June, 2018)