The Fetch & Maskwork: two poetry collections submitted as a single item. 978-1-911027-09-6 & 978-1-913437-03-9
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 27Z_OP_T2002
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Published by Nine Arches Press. a. https://ninearchespress.ecwid.com/The-Fetch-Gregory-Leadbetter-p70444802 b. https://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/maskwork.html
- Brief description of type
- The two poetry collections The Fetch and Maskwork are submitted as a single item.
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2016
- URL
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https://ninearchespress.ecwid.com/The-Fetch-Gregory-Leadbetter-p70444802
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Published by a leading independent press, these two books of poetry (The Fetch: 76pp, 52 poems; Maskwork: 81pp, 46 poems) are the products of over fifteen years’ work. Characterised by their close attention to auricular form and simultaneity of affect, each collection draws upon philology, etymology, archaeology, natural history, landscape, folklore, myth, music, theatre, ritual, science and technology, the esoteric and the occult, and Leadbetter’s work as a scholar of Romantic poetry and thought. Embodying a distinctive poetics of fascination in their aural and imaginative texture, these books constitute a new assertion of the cognitive and ontological authority of poetry.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The two poetry collections The Fetch (2016) and Maskwork (2020) are submitted as one output. Both reveal Leadbetter’s abiding interests as a poet: the interfusion of the lyric and the mythic, the sensuous and the numinous, the natural and the transnatural; ecstatic, altered states; imaginative experience as a moment of metaphysical inception; deep time and the historical and biological contingency of our being; the continuum of the human and the more-than-human; and the power of language to touch, to alter, and – in its effects – to create new life within the life we live. These are continuous with his work as a literary scholar, in particular on the poetics of mystery, and what Coleridge called ‘Poetic Faith before which our common notions of philosophy give way’; poetry as an organ of knowing and becoming; the authority of fiction; the relationship between our verbal and our nonverbal life; the generation and reconciliation of a new humanism with a new ecocentrism; and cultural transmission and renewal.
In these works, the end is in the means, and technically, the works are characterised by their syntactical valency and their attention to auditory qualities and rhythmic effect: those aspects of the poem beyond paraphrase, which nonetheless contribute to the making of sense. Unusually in English poetry, Leadbetter attends to metrical quantity within his accentual-syllabic patterning, creating a contemporary sound that draws upon the breadth of the Anglophone tradition, including Old English, Middle English and the assimilation of Classical poetics. Formally diverse, both collections also feature fresh engagements with the sonnet.
Five poems from The Fetch have been set to music for piano and voice by the American composer and pianist Eric McElroy, poems included here have been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2020, the Bridport Prize 2020, and numerous other international awards.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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