DESIGNED TO FADE

This Dissertation presents a narrative poem whose central theme is city life with special reference to London. The accompanying essay explores the way in which the city and experience of the city is represented in poetry. The hypothesis of both poem and essay is to establish whether there are theories of poetry and techniques for writing poetry which are specific to poetry of the city. This hypothesis will be tested with reference to the use of topography, gender, a continuum of women's history and politics, and the role of the narrator. The poem and essay refer to works by other poets who have written about the city and examine how they have written about this subject. This is undertaken with reference to both technique and theory, and includes reference to Peter Barry's Contemporary British Poetry and The City (2000). Tropes discussed include: the metonym, mise en abyme and the anacoluthon. Narrative levels used within the poem are also discussed. Poets studied include Wordsworth, Blake, James Thomson, Mina Loy, Leslie Scalapino, Roy Fisher, Allen Fisher. The main conclusions of this Dissertation are that topography plays a part in defining city poetry but that this is balanced or even superseded by the need for specific techniques of poetic tropes to be consciously understood and usedFaculty of Art