What is the political potential of poetry in the contemporary era? Exploring an often overlooked history of Marxist-Feminist poetics in post-war Britain – including such poets as Denise Riley, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Wendy Mulford and Nat Raha – this book confronts this central question to debates about the value of humanities education today.
Lyric Pedagogy and Marxist-Feminism demonstrates how ideas of social reproduction have been central both to the forms of post-1945 British poetry and the educational institutions where poetry is overwhelmingly encountered and produced. Combining new archival research with close readings of key poets of the period, the book charts the interrelated crises both of poetry itself and literary education more widely. Paradoxically, the very marginalisation of poetry in contemporary culture serves to offer the form new opportunities as an agent of social transformation.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Social Reproduction and Lyric Pedagogy
1. Practical Criticism and Lyric Pedagogy at Cambridge
2. Denise Riley's Socialized Biology
3. Forms of Reproduction in the Early Work of Wendy Mulford
4. Institutional Geologies and Lonely Sociality
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Examining the intersection of poetry with philosophy, linguistics, psychoanalysis, political and economic theory, and protest and liberation movements, Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics focuses on books on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. The series gives consideration to how poetry and poetics have moved themselves to the forefront of many of the most fraught and complex theoretical discussions of the post-war era.
Editorial Board:
Hélène Aji - University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre, France
Vincent Broqua - University of Paris 8 - Vincennes/Saint Denis, France
Olivier Brossard - University of Paris Est Marne La Vallée, France
Daniel Kane - University of Sussex, UK
Kyoo Lee - City University of New York, USA
Peter Middleton - University of Southampton, UK
Cristanne Miller - SUNY Buffalo, USA
Miriam Nichols - University of the Fraser Valley, USA
Aldon Nielsen - Pennsylvania State University, USA
Stephen Ross – Editor Wave Composition
Richard Sieburth - New York University, USA
Daniel Tiffany - University of Southern California, USA
Steven G. Yao - Hamilton College, USA