Reading Fiona Sampson : A Study in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

Integrating analysis and a honed interpretation of the near-total gamut of the oeuvre to-date of Professor Fiona Sampson, the book synthesizes its rigorous discussions of the poetry, prose in different genres, and literary practices of Professor Sampson over a decades-long and much-lauded literary career to date. Including biographical insights, the book goes on to show how the oeuvre of a major contemporary poet and writer evinces a vital literary intelligence and a vision of literary practice on and for the contemporary literary scene.

This book-length study of an eminent, distinguished and influential poet and contemporary woman of letters integrates analysis and a honed interpretation of the near-total gamut of the oeuvre to-date of Professor Fiona Sampson. The study includes biographical insight and synthesizes its rigorous discussions of the dominant rubric of Professor Sampson’s poetic métier, her prose in different genres, and the literary practices of over a decades-long and much-lauded literary career.  This critical work finds and displays incisive and fruitful ways by which the oeuvre in question crosses boundaries in literary writing and practices with fertile results and evidences those cross-currents in a manner that indicates the trajectory of a sensibility or structure of feeling, one which though highly intelligent and self-aware is also deeply empathic. A lucid, coherent and compelling reading of Sampson’s main works makes this book a scintillating study and a much needed contribution to the current work being done on major contemporary poets and writers and, in particular, contemporary women figures, in the British and international literary scenes.