'I mistrust the poem' : the crisis of representation in contemporary British poetry

Abstract

The object of this study is to analyse the history of controversy in post-war British poetry. It argues that these controversies can be described as constituting a crisis of representation. The history of controversy is analysed through a discussion of several key anthologies. These anthologies describe a development in terms of three stages. First the establishment of a canon. Second a revisionist response to the canon. Third a period of rapprochement. To this end it groups together New Lines (1956), The New Poetry (1962), and The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982), as constituting the representative anthologies of the canonical poetry. It uses The New British Poetry (1988) as the representative revisionist anthology. The New Poetry (1993) is the representative anthology of the period of rapprochement. Representations refers to three themes in post-war British poetry. First, it relates to the controversies surrounding the selection of poets to stand in as representative of the wider field of poetic endeavour. Second, it refers to the different formal strategies employed in contemporary poetry. Third, it refers to the way in which poetry can have a delegatory function, giving voice to, and speaking for, the concerns of particular group identities. The thesis argues that the crisis of representation in contemporary British poetry can be located at the point where the claims made by anthologies to representative status are called in question, and the demand that poetry represent group identity conflicts with the imperatives of certain formal strategies. It challenges prevailing accounts of the history of controversy that see the post-war period as divided between a conservative mainstream and a radical margin. It argues that a movement beyond the impasse of this false binary can be achieved if attention is paid to the continuities between the mainstream and the margin rather than to the polemics of literary dispute.

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