Gareth Farmer – författare

'Kerf' are the sawdust, particles or pieces irrevocably extracted from wood by the blades of cutting implements. Failure to calculate blade thickness when cutting wood can throw off project measurements exponentially. Thin-kerf blades are most accurate for fine woodworking, but they can warp and need careful maintenance. Thick-kerf blades are labour saving but are brute and lack finesse. The poems of Kerf write through themes of woodworking, craft and labour, but these poems also analogise 'kerf' as social and cultural remnants and as examples of disjecta membra. Embedded in and around these themes, the poems in Kerf also explore the author's own, as well as others', experiences of autism and neurodivergence, particularly as manifested in feelings of isolation and in experiences of violence and rejection, but also from the angles of positive and negative obsessions, focus and distraction.

First published posthumously in 1978 by Manchester University Press, this volume turned sharply against critics of the previous generation, notably William Empson, and against emergent strains of historicism. The book is an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) defence of "all the rhythmic, phonetic, verbal, and logical devices which make poetry different from prose." According to the author, such devices are responsible for poetry's most significant effect-not pleasure or ornament or some kind of special expressivity, but the production of "alternative imaginary orders."

This study offers a comprehensive examination of the work of the young poet and scholar, Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) in the context of a literary-critical revolution of the late sixties and seventies and evaluates her work against contemporary debates in poetry and poetics.