This book examines intersections of poetry and performance during the British Poetry Revival. Its investigations are centered on four specific performance events: The First International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965; Denise Riley's first public reading at the Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1977; Eric Mottram's Pollock Record; and Allen Fisher's Blood Bone Brain. Drawing upon a range of archival resources, recordings, and interviews, Juha Virtanen offers engaging and detailed "archaeological" accounts and analyses of these largely unexamined events as well as the potential dialogues between them. The appendices of the book also feature previously unpublished interviews with both Fisher and Riley.

This book is essential reading for poetry and performance enthusiasts, particularly those interested in innovative British Poetry.

Autorentext

Juha Virtanen is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Kent. His writing on English and American poetry has appeared in Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, Shearsman Review, the edited collection News from Afar, and elsewhere. His own poetry publications include Back Channel Apraxia (2014) and LAND (2016).

Inhalt

1 Introduction.- 2 Be kind to this place: Allen Ginsberg and the First International Poetry Incarnation.- 3 This blank space from which I speak: Denise Riley at the Cambridge Poetry Festival, April 15th 1977.- 4 Memories arrested in space: Eric Mottram's Pollock Record.- 5 You are invited to perform: Process, mutation and participation in Allen Fisher's Blood Bone Brain.- 6 Epilogue: Syntheses and further movements .- 7 Appendix A An Interview with Allen Fisher.-8 Appendix B An Interview with Denise Riley.