Contemporary British Poetry

James Acheson is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is coeditor of Beckett's Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for Company, and editor of The British and Irish Novel Since 1960 and British and Irish Drama Since 1960. Romana Huk is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.

"Acheson and Huk have gathered a set of critical essays that fairly defines a whole new set of energies and directions in Contemporary British Poetry. It is a kind of watershed document; it frames an historical period that we can now see as having existed between the end of the Second World War and the mid to late 1980s, and it fairly predicts the new impulses and emergent energies of a new generation." — Vincent Sherry, Villanova University"British Poetry has not been a part of American literary awareness for some time. A few poets are known and taught, but the energy and brilliant inventiveness in British Poetry since the 1970s is largely unknown. This book offers an entrance into a rich field, and will become an important part of a general reconsideration of British Poetry in America." — Michael Anania, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Preface IntroductionRomana Huk 1 Donald Davie and the Failure of EnglishnessAntony Easthope 2 The Poetry of Roy FisherJohn Matthias 3 Poets of A Various Art: J. H. Prynne, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Andrew CrozierEdward Larrissy 4 Poetry and the Women's Movement in Postwar BritainClaire Buck 5 Ian Hamilton Finlay and Concrete PoetryNicholas Zurbrugg 6 From Myth into History: The Later Poetry of Thom Gunn and Ted HughesPaul Giles 7 Poetry of the Committed Individual: Jon Silkin, Tony Harrison, Geoffrey Hill, and the Poets of Postwar LeedsRomana Huk 8 "Upon the Slippery Place"; or, In the Shit: Geoffrey Hill's Writing and the Failures of Postmodern MemoryR. K. Meiners 9 "Look for the Doing Words": Carol Ann Duffy and Questions of ConventionLinda Kinnahan 10 Postfeminist Poetry?: "one more word for balls"Vicki Bertram 11 Bass History Is A-Moving: Black Men's Poetry in BritainAlastair Niven 12 Accent and Identity: Women Poets of Many PartsC. L. Innes 13 From the Lost Ground: Liz Lochhead, Douglas Dunn, and Contemporary Scottish PoetryCairns Craig 14 Wales and the Cultural Politics of Identity: Gillian Clarke, Robert Minhinnick, and Jeremy HookerLinden Peach Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Index