The visual aesthetic in Lynette Roberts, Stevie Smith, and Liz Lochhead
The visual aesthetic in Lynette Roberts, Stevie Smith, and Liz Lochhead
The recent publication of 'Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual' (OUP, 2007) edited by Sally Bayley and Kathleen Conners has highlighted the critical neglect of visual and artistic trends in twentieth-century women’s poetry. This essay will apply W.J.T. Mitchell’s theories of ecphrasis and iconology to three poets who all, at various points in their careers, considered themselves painters or artists, examining how the failure of language to represent experience is mitigated by their emphasis on the visual. Lynette Robert’s Primitivist paintings illuminate useful modernist contexts for reading poems such as ‘Brazilian Blue’, whilst also suggesting formalist linguistic concerns. Stevie Smith’s own sketches or “higher doodling” have long proved problematic when interpreting her verse, and here will be analysed alongside poems such as ‘Breughel’ and ‘Fuite D’Enfance’. The visual sources for her illustrations will also be briefly considered, exploring how her dialogue with painters from Goya to George Grosz reveals her attempt to situate herself within a serious literary canon. Liz Lochhead trained as a painter at the Glasgow School of Art, and despite her apparent rejection of a painterly aesthetic in poems such as ‘Notes on the inadequacy of a sketch’, her work preoccupies itself with visual tropes, from the idea of paint as disguise in ‘Warpaint and Womenflesh’ to her collaboration with linocut artist Willie Rodger for the collection The Colour of Black and White: poems 1984-2003 (2003). Through close attention to Roberts, Smith, and Lochhead, the chapter will also shed light on the ecphrastic poetry of Elizabeth Jennings, U.A. Fanthorpe, and Carol Ann Duffy.
Cambridge University Press
May, William
f41afa4c-1ccc-4ac6-83b6-9f5d9aad0f67
2011
May, William
f41afa4c-1ccc-4ac6-83b6-9f5d9aad0f67
May, William
(2011)
The visual aesthetic in Lynette Roberts, Stevie Smith, and Liz Lochhead.
In,
Dowson, Jane
(ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century British and Irish Women's Poetry.
Cambridge, GB.
Cambridge University Press.
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
The recent publication of 'Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual' (OUP, 2007) edited by Sally Bayley and Kathleen Conners has highlighted the critical neglect of visual and artistic trends in twentieth-century women’s poetry. This essay will apply W.J.T. Mitchell’s theories of ecphrasis and iconology to three poets who all, at various points in their careers, considered themselves painters or artists, examining how the failure of language to represent experience is mitigated by their emphasis on the visual. Lynette Robert’s Primitivist paintings illuminate useful modernist contexts for reading poems such as ‘Brazilian Blue’, whilst also suggesting formalist linguistic concerns. Stevie Smith’s own sketches or “higher doodling” have long proved problematic when interpreting her verse, and here will be analysed alongside poems such as ‘Breughel’ and ‘Fuite D’Enfance’. The visual sources for her illustrations will also be briefly considered, exploring how her dialogue with painters from Goya to George Grosz reveals her attempt to situate herself within a serious literary canon. Liz Lochhead trained as a painter at the Glasgow School of Art, and despite her apparent rejection of a painterly aesthetic in poems such as ‘Notes on the inadequacy of a sketch’, her work preoccupies itself with visual tropes, from the idea of paint as disguise in ‘Warpaint and Womenflesh’ to her collaboration with linocut artist Willie Rodger for the collection The Colour of Black and White: poems 1984-2003 (2003). Through close attention to Roberts, Smith, and Lochhead, the chapter will also shed light on the ecphrastic poetry of Elizabeth Jennings, U.A. Fanthorpe, and Carol Ann Duffy.
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Submitted date: 1 January 2009
Published date: 2011
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Local EPrints ID: 67576
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/67576
PURE UUID: 0aa2fc27-b9ef-4065-8e40-0e539226c5c6
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Date deposited: 26 Aug 2009
Last modified: 10 Dec 2021 16:17
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Editor:
Jane Dowson
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