The 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)

“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)