Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics Series Editor David Herd University of Kent Canterbury, UK Founded by Rachel Blau DuPlessis and continued by David Herd, Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics promotes and pursues topics in the burgeoning feld of 20th and 21st century poetics. Critical and scholarly work on poetry and poetics of interest to the series includes: social loca- tion in its relationships to subjectivity, to the construction of authorship, to oeuvres, and to careers; poetic reception and dissemination (groups, movements, formations, institutions); the intersection of poetry and the- ory; questions about language, poetic authority, and the goals of writing; claims in poetics, impacts of social life, and the dynamics of the poetic career as these are staged and debated by poets and inside poems. Since its inception, the series has been distinguished by its tilt toward experimental work – intellectually, politically, aesthetically. It has consistently published work on Anglophone poetry in the broadest sense and has featured critical work studying literatures of the UK, of the US, of Canada, and Australia, as well as eclectic mixes of work from other social and poetic communities. As poetry and poetics form a crucial response to contemporary social and political conditions, under David Herd’s editorship the series will continue to broaden understanding of the feld and its signifcance. Editorial Board Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Temple University Vincent Broqua, Université Paris 8 Olivier Brossard, Université Paris-Est Steve Collis, Simon Fraser University Jacob Edmond, University of Otago Stephen Fredman, Notre Dame University Fiona Green, University of Cambridge Abigail Lang, Université Paris Diderot Will Montgomery, Royal Holloway University of London Miriam Nichols, University of the Fraser Valley Redell Olsen, Royal Holloway University of London Sandeep Parmar, University of Liverpool Adam Piette, University of Sheffeld Nisha Ramayya, Queen Mary University of London Brian Reed, University of Washington Ann Vickery, Deakin University Carol Watts, University of Sussex More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14799 Jo Lindsay Walton · Ed Luker Editors Poetry and Work Work in Modern and Contemporary Anglophone Poetry Editors Jo Lindsay Walton Ed Luker Bath Spa University University of Surrey Bath, UK Guildford, UK Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics ISBN 978-3-030-26124-5 ISBN 978-3-030-26125-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26125-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover credit: The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Jo Lindsay Walton acknowledges the support of the Institute of the Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, and the Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex, for part of the time spent preparing this collection. Both Jo and Ed would like to thank our families and friends, as also to express our gratitude to Rachel Blau Duplessis, Robert Hampson, Rodrigo Toscano, Juliana Spahr, Anne Boyer, Samantha Walton, Lila Matsumoto, Nat Raha, Eleanor Careless, Sara Crangle, David Herd, Surya Sekaran, Preetha Kuttiappan, and Allie Troyanos for their contributions and enthusiasm, and to Rachel Jacobe at Palgrave for her patience, encouragement, and scrupulousness. And we’d both like to give special thanks to Ian Davidson for all his support and guidance. v PRAISE FOR POETRY AND WORK “This volume represents an outstanding contribution to current debates in contemporary poetry. It examines the poetry of work and the work that poetry does in a highly original, theoretically sophisticated and ana- lytically nuanced manner. The essays engage with work and labour across a range of poetries and constituencies and provide a timely address to the place of work in the context of a post-work future and the privatised dig- ital market. It is likely to be seen as a major, paradigm-shifting work in relation to contemporary poetry.” —Robert Hampson, Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and author of Seaport (2008) “To think poetry and work together is to question poetry’s standing both against and as work, to hypothesize what poetry itself might be in the world of those who wish to end all we have hitherto known as labor. The essays in this collection engage fearlessly with the permutations, consequences and destructive capacities of this questioning. They repre- sent a new generation—perhaps, we hope, the last generation—of those who will even speak the words poetry and work as if they were commen- surate. That the book speaks to such a hope is the highest possible form of recommendation.” —Anne Boyer, Associate Professor, Kansas City Art Institute, USA, and author of A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018) and Garments Against Women (2015) vii viii PRAISE FOR POETRY AND WORK “In a time when there is virtually no subjectivity that hasn’t found its ‘voice,’ no ‘topic’ that hasn’t been duly treated, no ‘issue’ that’s not been confronted, the concept and reality of work in poetics remains elusive at best; at worst, a near censorship of it reigns. But upon close examination, it becomes clear that overtly fushing out the phenome- non of work from aesthetic acts, embarrasses aesthetic discourse in gen- eral. Idealism collapses unto materialism. And it is from this humbling and renewed state of awareness that we must begin. In this riveting new collection, the three intertwined aspects of work—the symbolic, the productive, and the distributive—are explored thoroughly. The essays themselves stand as authentic poetic acts. Cultural archeologists of the future might well regard this volume as an essential guide to the ever expanding horizon of that strange human productive activity we call poetry.” —Rodrigo Toscano, author of Collapsible Poetics Theater (2008) and Explosion Rocks Springfeld (2016) “This collection of essays rigorously explores how capitalism, reproduc- tive labor, the falling rate of proft, and acts of working are represented in post-war poetry. Poets are unacknowledged day job workers of the cultural production world. A signifcant part of post-war poetry is writ- ten during time stolen on the day job or late in the evening, after a long shift. As such, poems are full of theoretical possibilities for understanding how work has shaped the aesthetics, the affnities, and the utopian claims of contemporary literature. This book stands as a committed investiga- tion into an array of affnities between the ordinary grounding of work and its utopian claims.” —Juliana Spahr, Professor of English, Mills college, USA, and author of That Winter the Wolf Came (2015) CONTENTS 1 Introduction: Working Late 1 Jo Lindsay Walton and Ed Luker Part I Essays 2 Show Your Workings: Other Forms of Labour in Recent Poetry 71 Peter Middleton 3 Bird-Song by Everyone, for Everyone: Poetry, Work, and Play in J. H. Prynne’s Prose 105 Lisa Jeschke 4 “The Stitching of Her Wake”: The Collaboration of Pamela Campion and Ian Hamilton Finlay 121 Lila Matsumoto 5 Basil Bunting and the Work of Poetry 139 Annabel Haynes ix x CONTENTS 6 Art Takes All My Time: Work in the Poetry and Prison Writing of Anna Mendelssohn 165 Eleanor Careless 7 Queer Labour in Boston: The Work of John Wieners, Gay Liberation and Fag Rag 195 Nat Raha 8 Without the Text at Hand: Postcolonial Writing and the Work of Memorisation 245 Aimée Lê 9 Body Burdens: The Materiality of Work in Rita Wong’s Forage 263 Samantha Walton 10 “Because We Love Wrong”: Citizenship and Labour in Alena Hairston’s The Logan Topographies 291 Lytton Smith 11 “What Gives Pause or Impetus”: The Double Bind of Labor in Rodrigo Toscano’s Poetics 309 Jose-Luis Moctezuma 12 Distributed and Entangled Posture in Catherine Wagner’s My New Job and Nervous Device 327 Holly Pester Part II Refections 13 The Exploit: Affective Labor and Poetry at the University 355 Catherine Wagner CONTENTS xi 14 Floating On—If Not Up—Ward 371 Tyrone Williams 15 Extract from the Poetic Labor Project 375 Amber DiPietra Index 381 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Eleanor Careless completed her AHRC-funded Ph.D. Serve Your Own Sentences: Incarceration in the Poetry of Anna Mendelssohn at the University of Sussex in 2018. Her current research focuses on rep- resentations of imprisonment by women in the twentieth century. She is currently an Associate Tutor within the School of English at the University of Sussex. In 2016 she was the recipient of an AHRC International Placement Scheme research fellowship at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and in 2017 she was awarded a Literary Encyclopedia Travel Award which facilitated archival research at the Harry Ransom Centre in Austin, Texas.