‘What you thought you have forgotten’: The Mersey Sound Revisited

The Mersey Sound (1967) was the best-selling poetry anthology of the sixties in the UK. Apart from its commercial success, it is also an important document in terms of the study of working-class literary output in this decade. Despite this, its position within the British literary canon has often been neglected in academic realms. It is for this reason that the present article aims to offer an insight into the scholarly importance of thisanthology through offering arguments for its reevaluation. Moreover, in this research its current status will be explored, looking in particular at contemporary literary criticism of working-class mass culture and art. To this end, I will first discuss the main justifications for a reconsideration of the significance of the collection and describe its context and origins. This will be followed by an analysis of the content of the volume and its current relevance. Conclusions drawn from this will include possible reasons for its absence in many academic poetry guides and will also stress the need torecover and reappraise the anthology in future research on working-class British poetry.

Metamodernism and Contemporary British Poetry

This book discusses contemporary British poetry in the context of metamodernism. The author argues that the concept of metamodernist poetry helps to recalibrate the opposition between mainstream and innovative poetry, and he investigates whether a new generation of British poets can be accurately defined as metamodernist. Antony Rowland analyses the ways in which contemporary British poets such as Geoffrey Hill, J. H. Prynne, Geraldine Monk and Sandeep Parmar have responded to the work of modernist writers as diverse as T. S. Eliot, H. D. and Antonin Artaud, and what Theodor Adorno describes as the overall enigma of modern art.

MODERN LITERATURE

This chapter has eight sections 1. General; 2. Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry Pre-1950; 7. British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Shawna Ross; section 2(a) is by Francesca Bratton; Section 2(b) will resume in 2022; section 2(c) is by Georgina Binnie; section 2(d) is by Andrew Keese; section 2(e) is by Joshua Phillips; section 3(a) is by Mark West; section 3(b) is by Samuel Cooper; section 4(a) is by Sophie Stringfellow; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Graham Saunders; section 6(a) is by Noreen Masud; section 6(b) is by Matthew Creasy; section 7 is by Alex Alonso; section 8 is by Jack Quin.

Talk the Poem: Re-positioning Poetry Recitation as Transformative Pedagogy

Poetry is often perceived by many as the genre of Literature, which is only accessible to specific kinds of individuals, with special artistic sensibilities. As much as we have moved away from formalistic notions of engaging with poetry, the text or written word itself, continues to be treated as an isolated substance, awaiting profound interpretation from those who are gifted with the skills of response. This article explores the importance of offering encounters with poetry which will enable sustainable transformation and growth for both teachers and students. The Talk the Poem (TTP) National Poetry Project was established to provide secondary students from across the island with the space and opportunity to engage with and recite Caribbean and British poetry, through interactive workshops and a national recitation competition. Through a series of critical self-reflective moments, core members of the TTP project attempted to determine the role and scope of the project in the lives of the secondary school teachers and students. This article reports findings on the positive and insightful outcomes of the TTP experience for teacher and student participants, deciphered through document analysis, team discussions, interviews, and surveys.