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'"Her twilight sparkle": Reflections In and On Connie Scozzaro’s "Women, Swum Through The Cracks"', Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry 7.2 (forthcoming).

  • MA Critical Theory (University of Sussex)
  • BA English Literature and Philosophy (University of Sussex)
  • CELTA

I am undertaking my PhD research on post-war literary modernism, examining the work of Ezra Pound, Charles Olson and J. H. Prynne. The focus of this project is to look at how Prynne’s poetry responds to the challenges of the work of Pound and Olson. The aim is to better contextualize what specifically it is that certain arguments within Prynne’s poetry and research are responding to. This is done through a mixture of comparative and distinctive close reading combined with archival research (focussing on Prynne’s letters) as well as providing historical context. My contention is that each of Pound, Olson and Prynne’s poetry provides the reader with a specific argument about what it means to pay attention to both the poem and also the external world. These poetic arguments about attention relate very closely to each poet’s political beliefs: Pound’s fascism, Olson’s democratic renewal and Prynne’s Maoism. Furthermore, my research is an attempt to move away from recent philological or exegetical readings on Prynne by utilising a broader looking method of contextualisation through comparison.

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