Poetic Practice

"Veronica Forrest-Thomson: Larking up Kicks"

A Call for Papers

"[O]ne of the misfortunes of the lack of attention being paid to English poetry of this century is the obscurity of Veronica Forrest-Thomson, a poet who died in 1975 at the age of 27." So stated Brian Kim-Stefans in July 2001. In 2002, literary critic Suzanne Raitt expressed the hope that Forrest-Thomson's unknown status would be mitigated by a compilation of her poetry in the nineties and a recent monograph by Alison Mark. This symposium emerges on the heels of another updated version of Forrest-Thomson's poetry, namely Veronica Forrest-Thomson: Collected Poems (ed. Anthony Barnett, published by Shearsman Books and Allardyce, Barnett, 2008).

Veronica Forrest-Thomson wrote three poetry collections: _Identi-kit_ (1967) _Language Games_ (1971), and _On the Periphery_ (1976). She was also a literary theorist and critic who authored _Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry_ (1978). Her work is witty, philosophical, and occasionally, deliberately, badly rhymed. It is also worthy of more consideration.

Christ's College, Cambridge and the Centre for Modernist Studies at the University of Sussex intend to co-host a day-long symposium dedicated to the work of Veronica Forrest-Thomson. It will be held on Saturday, January 17th, 2008 at Cambridge, and will involve panels comprised of 15-minute papers and a longer, seminar-style finale of very short close readings of individual Forrest-Thomson poems. Our intent is to foster an informed and comfortable dialogue about Forrest-Thomson, and contemplate ways of approaching her work.

As such, we welcome papers on any facet of Forrest-Thomson's poetry and criticism. Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to both Sara Crangle (S.Crangle@sussex.ac.uk) and Sophie Read (sncr2@cam.ac.uk).