Description
Poetry is an ancient verbal art, which has its roots in the oral epics and fragments that survive from classical times. Dictionaries of English, by contrast, are a comparatively recent phenomenon, beginning with the 'hard words' that Robert Cawdrey gathered in A Table Alphabeticall in 1604 and extending to the present edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, with its ongoing revisions. This innovative collection of essays is the first volume to explore the ways in which dictionaries have stimulated the imaginations of modern and contemporary poets from Britain, Ireland, and America, while also considering how poetry has itself been a rich source of material for lexicographers.
About the Author
Andrew Blades is Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. Piers Pennington completed his doctoral studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Reviews
Reviews 'This fascinating collection of essays offers a set of new perspectives on experimental poetics as a tradition and as a current practice. This will be a book of substantial interest to scholars, critics, students and readers of contemporary poetry.'
Professor Andrew Roberts, University of Dundee
'This collection affords the poet, the lexicographer, and the literary scholar a fruitful and rich cross-disciplinary dive into the mechanics of both language and lyricism... a worthy collection of essays.'
D. A. Lockhart, Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America
'Readers who want to know about W.H. Auden's "love affair with the OED" (p. 83) will find enlightenment here, while the poems and essays of T.S. Eliot are individually indexed in a highly professional index at the back of the book. [...] Equally rewarding for the curious reader is Tara Stubbs's essay on Marianne Moore, an American poet of the early 20th-century.'
Patrick Hanks, International Journal of Lexicography
'For readers willing to engage with this more academic text, Poetry & the Dictionary will provide a degree of poetic and intellectual investigation that may ultimately lead to polyvocal poetry.'
Renee M. Sgroi, Carousel Magazine
'Looking through a ... broader scope, Piers Pennington and Andrew Blades's Poetry & the Dictionary tracks the centuries-long relationship between the terms of their book's title ... remind[ing] us that the dictionary itself cannot be "depersonalized," that no "picture" it presents is necessarily clear.'
Chelsie Malyszek, LA Review of Books
Book Information
ISBN 9781789620566
Author Andrew Blades
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
As well as gauging the influence of major dictionaries like the OED, the essays single out encounters with more specialised works and broach uses of words that are not typically included in dictionaries. In doing so, the contributors not only cast familiar questions of ambiguity and etymology in a fresh light, but they also reveal a number of surprising and energising points of contact, from Hugh MacDiarmid's rediscovery of Scots to Tina Darragh's visual appropriations of dictionary pages. As such, Poetry & the Dictionary will prove an indispensable volume for all readers - academic or not - who find themselves fascinated by the language's many involutions.
About the Author
Andrew Blades is Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. Piers Pennington completed his doctoral studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Reviews
Reviews 'This fascinating collection of essays offers a set of new perspectives on experimental poetics as a tradition and as a current practice. This will be a book of substantial interest to scholars, critics, students and readers of contemporary poetry.'
Professor Andrew Roberts, University of Dundee
'This collection affords the poet, the lexicographer, and the literary scholar a fruitful and rich cross-disciplinary dive into the mechanics of both language and lyricism... a worthy collection of essays.'
D. A. Lockhart, Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America
'Readers who want to know about W.H. Auden's "love affair with the OED" (p. 83) will find enlightenment here, while the poems and essays of T.S. Eliot are individually indexed in a highly professional index at the back of the book. [...] Equally rewarding for the curious reader is Tara Stubbs's essay on Marianne Moore, an American poet of the early 20th-century.'
Patrick Hanks, International Journal of Lexicography
'For readers willing to engage with this more academic text, Poetry & the Dictionary will provide a degree of poetic and intellectual investigation that may ultimately lead to polyvocal poetry.'
Renee M. Sgroi, Carousel Magazine
'Looking through a ... broader scope, Piers Pennington and Andrew Blades's Poetry & the Dictionary tracks the centuries-long relationship between the terms of their book's title ... remind[ing] us that the dictionary itself cannot be "depersonalized," that no "picture" it presents is necessarily clear.'
Chelsie Malyszek, LA Review of Books
Book Information
ISBN 9781789620566
Author Andrew Blades
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
