Narrative and Voice in Postwar Poetry

Poetry in English since the Second World War has produced a number of highly original narrative works, as various as Derek Walcott's Omeros, Ted Hughes's Gaudete and Anne Stevenson's Correspondences. At the same time, poetry in general has been permeated by narrative features, particularly those linguistic characteristics that Mickhail Bakhtin considered peculiar to the novel, and which he termed 'dialogic'. This book examines the narrative and dialogic elements in a range of poets from the immediate post-war years to the contemporary, from Britain, America, Ireland, Australia and the Caribbean, and from novel-like narratives to personal lyrics. Its unifying theme is the way in which these poets, of such contrasting styles and background, respond to and creatively adapt the language-worlds, and hence the social worlds in which they live.