London Bridge

Smith, Simon M (2010) London Bridge. Salt Modern Poets S. . Salt Publishing, Cambridge, 80 pp. ISBN 978-1-84471-490-2. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:40674)

Abstract

Item Type:	Book
Additional information:	London Bridge is a full-length collection of poems that offer an iquiry by way of experience of living in a very specific area of London, New Cross. It is a collection relating to specific historical events and registers how history has shaped the area, not just in terms of the landscape, but also in terms of the subjectivities, which inhabit place. Events, which over-shadow the poems are the Blitz, the July 7th bombings and other associated happenings related to 9/11. The poems are, therefore, grounded in practical and theoretical research. The deconstruction of self is an important line of inquiry in these poems, often engaging with figures such as Derrida directly, using the texts of the poems to interrogate notions of subjectivity and the role of language in the formation of self. The theoretical research has taken the form of extensive reading in philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches to fractured subjectivity, and the works Lacan, Saussure, Barthes and Derrida are never far from the surface of the poems. A further line of inquiry into subjectivity and self takes place relating to the themes of love and the loss of children through the practice of literary translation of works by Rilke, Martial and Apollinaire, where the ventriloquising of voices is used to objectify raw emotional content. For Michael Schmidt (editor of PN Review and Carcanet Press), ‘Simon Smith has an instinct for . . . memorable registers and tones . . . . His imagination is musical . . . his translations attest to the deep continuity of his work . . . with a classical authority’. ;
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English philology and language
Divisions:	Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
Depositing User:	Simon Smith
Date Deposited:	07 Mar 2014 00:05 UTC
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI:	https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40674 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)