Caroline Bergvall’s Medievalist Poetics

Joshua Davies is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature in the Department of English at King’s College London and published Visions and Ruins: Cultural Memory and the Untimely Middle Ages in 2018.Caroline Bergvall, Global Professorial Fellow, Queen Mary University London, is an award-winning poet, artist, and performer. She has an interdisciplinary practice, working across artforms, media, and languages in a wide range of contexts.

Caroline Bergvall contains multitudes: poet, artist, critic, performer, speaker, and multilingual writer whose work spans literary periods and genres. Above all, Bergvall’s oeuvre holds particular significance for medievalists. This volume, coedited by Joshua Davies together with Bergvall, is a sprawling discussion of and tribute to Bergvall’s medieval-inspired trilogy Meddle English (2011), Drift (2014), and Alisoun Sings (2019). The book looks slim, but its densely printed pages comprise an impressive polyphony of voices and engagement with Bergvall’s works, featuring contributions from scholars, poets, and artists. [...] If you have yet to encounter Bergvall’s works, this is your sign to do so now—pick up this book and experience her oeuvre through a kaleidoscopic lens of medievalist poetics in action.

• List of IllustrationsDavid Wallace, "Foreword"Caroline Bergvall and Joshua Davies, "Introduction"Part 1: Meddle EnglishDocuments 1: Drew Milne, "A Veritable Dollmine"2: Mary Wilson, Meddle English3: Jacob Edmond, “'Let’s Do a Gertrude Stein on It': Caroline Bergvall and Iterative Poetics"4: Robert Sheppard, "Inventive Reworkings: Transformation and Translation in Caroline Bergvall’s Meddle English"5: Candace Barrington, "Midden, Trash, and Garbage: The Discourse of Debris in Bergvall’s 'The Franker Tale (Deus Hic, 2)'”6: Vincent Broqua, Translative Bergvall, or the Work of TranslationPart 2: DriftDocuments 7: So Mayer, "All at Sea"8: David Kaufmann, "Drift"9: Cherry Smyth, "Caroline Bergvall’s Drift"   10: Áine McMurtry, "Giving a Syntax to the Cry: Caroline Bergvall’s Drift"11: Adalaide Morris, "Forensic listening: NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, Caroline Bergvall’s Drift, and the Contemporary Long Poem"12: Sierra Lomuto, Drifting into the Fog: The Opacity of the Past in Caroline Bergvall’s Drift"Part 3: Alisoun SingsDocuments 13: Greg Bem, "Alisoun Sings"14: Charles Theonia, "Collective Poesy: The Disruptive Pleasures of Caroline Bergvall’s Alisoun Sings"15: Kyoo Lee, "Alisounation"16: Usha Vishnuvajjala, "Alisoun’s Friends: Caroline Bergvall’s Community of Alisouns"17: Tamsin Blaxter, "Old Language is Dredged up a New"18: Marion Turner, "Alisoun after Alisoun"19: Georgina Colby, “'A happy combimess, simple': Forms of Activism and Collective Resistance in Alisoun Sings"Part 4: Other Voices20: Charles Bernstein, "Bergvall’s Meddling and Brush up your Chaucer"21: Sawako Nakayasu, "Dream Number One"22: Mónica de la Torre, "Parable"23: Vincent Broqua, Abigail Lang, Anne Portugal, "Le Non Conte (Funérailles)"24: Erín Moure, "In Arborescence"25: Imogen Stidworthy, "Airborne"26: Anthony Vahni Capildeo, "Weather Systems"Part 5: Interviews27: Susan Rudy28: Eva Heisler29: Greg NissanRachael Gilmour, "Afterword"Select Bibliography on Bergvall’s Medievalist TrilogyIndex