The Duality of Page and Stage: Constructing Lyrical Voices in Contemporary British Poetry Written for Performance
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Merle Tönnies
,
Joana Brüning
Abstract
The paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyse characteristic works by three contemporary British authors who come from different backgrounds but have all, in various ways, brought a performative perspective to bear on their poetry: Patience Agbabi, Jackie Kay, and Ben Mellor. The focus is on the concrete techniques which the poets use to construct different lyrical voices in the written texts as well as in performance. With their emphasis on difference(s), they seem to align themselves closely with broader literary and cultural developments like postmodernism or Stuart Hall’s ‘politics of representation,’ while nevertheless repeatedly suggesting the possibility of a unifying centre behind the text. All in all, the detailed analyses of the poems show the authors to take up different positions in the continuum between orality and writing, unity and diversity, as well as political intervention and playfulness.
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©2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction: Poetry and Performance
- Articles
- “Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke”: Aspects of Drama and Performance in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet “Oh My Black Soule”
- Performance, Performativity, and the Medium of Poetry: W. B. Yeats’s “Among School Children”
- Engaging with T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets as a Multimedia Performance
- The Duality of Page and Stage: Constructing Lyrical Voices in Contemporary British Poetry Written for Performance
- Popular Songs, Poetry, and Performance: Observations on an On-going Debate
- ‘I wanna be a Rock Star!’ Lyrical Communication in Self-Referential Rock Songs
- On the Interface between Page and Stage: Interview with Patience Agbabi
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction: Poetry and Performance
- Articles
- “Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke”: Aspects of Drama and Performance in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet “Oh My Black Soule”
- Performance, Performativity, and the Medium of Poetry: W. B. Yeats’s “Among School Children”
- Engaging with T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets as a Multimedia Performance
- The Duality of Page and Stage: Constructing Lyrical Voices in Contemporary British Poetry Written for Performance
- Popular Songs, Poetry, and Performance: Observations on an On-going Debate
- ‘I wanna be a Rock Star!’ Lyrical Communication in Self-Referential Rock Songs
- On the Interface between Page and Stage: Interview with Patience Agbabi
