Poetry & Commons: Postwar and Romantic Lyric in Times of Enclosure

Poetry & Commons is the winner of the ASLE-UKI Book Prize 2023. It explores how postwar and contemporary poetry responds to political and ecological crises by re-imagining the commons and enclosure. Through close readings of experimental poetries, it demonstrates a commons turn in contemporary lyric that contests the new enclosures of globalized capital and resource extraction. The book also theorizes commoning as marking out subsistence rhythms of resource, articulating plural, irregular, and tentative relations between human and nonhuman lifeworlds.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 01 June 2022
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Winner of the ASLE-UKI Book Prize 2023, "Poetry & Commons" is a groundbreaking exploration of poetry's relationship with the commons and enclosure, raising urgent ecological and political concerns about land and resource ownership and use. This innovative study delves into postwar and contemporary poetry, placing it in conversation with the Romantic experience of agrarian dispossession. Through a transhistorical framework, the book showcases how radical Anglophone poetries since 1960 have reclaimed the enclosure of the commons in response to political and ecological crises. It identifies a commons turn in contemporary lyric that challenges the new enclosures of globalized capital and resource extraction. In meticulous close readings of a diverse range of experimental poetries associated with the British Poetry Revival, as well as from Canada and the United States, the book analyzes the landscape poetics of enclosure in relation to Romantic verse. By examining the fine-grain textures of the periods' vernacular and radical verse and discourse around enclosure, the book reveals the seeds of neoliberal political economy embedded within canonical Romantic poetry by Wordsworth and Clare. Engaging with the work of Anne-Lise François and Anna Tsing, "Poetry & Commons" theorizes commoning as the marking out of subsistence rhythms of resource, which articulate plural, irregular, and tentative relations between human and nonhuman lifeworlds. This groundbreaking work contributes to our understanding of the complex interplay between poetry, politics, and the environment, offering valuable insights into the urgent challenges and opportunities of our time.

Dimension: 239 x 163 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800856509