Complicities: British Poetry 1945-2007

This collection of essays does not seek to fashion a bespoke 21st-century Albion from the remnants of Britain's various poetic traditions. The poetry considered here, and its criticism too, is by and large critical of the "new imperial suitings" beneath which the old and new networks of power run. The work gathered in these pages knows language and culture to be profoundly complicit across the board in the extension of acts of domination, from the preparation for and execution of war, to the composition of the suicide note, from the overt corrupting of the democratic franchise, to cold calling's interpellation of the human subject as consumer-in-waiting. "... an excellent, timely set of essays ..." --Peter Middleton Contributors to this volume include: Thomas Day, Keston Sutherland, Alizon Brunning, Robin Purves, J.H. Prynne, Bruce Stewart, D.S. Marriott, Stephen Thomson, Craig Dworkin, Sophie Read, Sara Crangle, Malcolm Phillips, Tom Jones, Josh Robinson, Sam Ladkin, Jennifer Cooke, Ian Patterson. Robin Purves is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Central Lancashire. Sam Ladkin is a researcher at the University of Cambridge.