Speaking to You ─ Contemporary Poetry and Public Address

Speaking to You examines our pleasures in, accounts of, and uses for British poetry today. It explores the work of four important poets writing post-1960--Don Paterson, Geoffrey Hill, W.S. Graham, and C.H. Sissons--in order to show how contemporary British poetry's creative handling of addresses to 'you' are key in its interactions with readers, critics, lovers, editors, fellow poets, and deceased forebears.

The book lays out clearly, in four sections that focus on individual writers, how saying 'you' operates in contemporary poetry. It shows how lyric address is bound up with poetry's ability to delight, move and tease its public. It puts address into dialogue with a range of familiar literary figures across the ages - namely specific Modernist, Romantic, early Modern, and Classical poets - that will be familiar to scholars and ordinary readers alike.

From John Donne to Carol Ann Duffy, T.S. Eliot to Philip Larkin, Keats to Tony Harrison, address has been key in constructing political and personal identities. This book argues that, for contemporary poets - like that of these canonical writers - address is persuasive public interlocution; demanding 'you' rethink regional and historical allegiances.

Natalie Pollard specialises in British literature from 1960-present, especially English and Scottish poetry. She has published on the contemporary English poet Geoffrey Hill, the Scottish poet W.S. Graham, and the South African writer J.M. Coetzee. She is currently editing a collection of critical essays on the Scottish poet, Don Paterson. She also writes reviews for the Times Literary Supplement's page, 'Poetry: In Brief'. She gained her PhD from the University of York in 2009 and went on to teach and research modern literature at The University of Exeter, The University of Edinburgh, and The University of Cape Town. She is currently a British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Reading and is writing a new book entitled Lyric Economies: Poetry in the Marketplace.