Samuel Beckett’s Poetry. Eds James Brophy & William Davies. Cambridge UP.
Last month saw the publication of what is described as ‘the first book-length study of Beckett’s complete poetry’. Editors James Brophy and William Davies have gathered together contributions from an impressive list of scholars to provide a book which is designed for students and scholars of twentieth century poetry and literature, as well as for specialists of Beckett’s work. The volume promises to explore ‘how poetry provided Beckett a medium of expression during key moments in his life, from his earliest attempts at securing a reputation as a published writer, to the work of restoring his own speech while suffering aphasia shortly before his death. Often these were moments of desperation and discouragement, when more substantial works were not possible: moments of illness, of personal loss or of public disaster. This volume includes an introduction that contextualizes Beckett as a poet and a chronology of the composition and publication of all his known poems. Essays offer a range of critical perspectives, from translation theory, war poetics and Irish Studies to Beckett’s debts to Modernism, Romanticism and the Jazz Age’.
Contributors include Hannah Simpson, David Wheatley, Dirk Van Hulle, Adam Piette, José Francisco Fernández, Pascal Sardin, John Pilling, Edward Lee-Six, Mark Nixon, Daniel Katz, Gerald Dawe, Onno Kosters, Mark Byron, and Andrew Goodspeed, as well as from the volume’s co-editors.
Full details available here.
The Samuel Beckett Society 