In Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma uncovers a startling set of interlocking relationships among poets from Nigeria, Ireland, the Caribbean, and multiracial postwar Britain during the period of midcentury decolonization (1950s–1970s). In the past decade or so, scholars have emphasized the cross-cultural constitution of postcolonial poetry and poetics, often emphasizing how social realities become refracted through aesthetic strategies of language and form (e.g., Crawford 1992; Hena 2015; Hunter 2019; Patke 2006; Ramazani 2001, 2009; Stilling 2018). Similarly attentive to poetry’s formal repertoires, Suhr-Sytsma charts a pathbreaking study in poetry criticism and in postcolonial literary studies more broadly. By foregrounding the medium of print and on-the-ground institutional networks mediating poetic production, circulation, and reception, he masterfully navigates how such nonmetropolitan poets as Christopher Okigbo, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, among a host of others, productively operate...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Book Review|
September 01 2019
Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature
Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature
. By Suhr-Sytsma, Nathan. Cambridge
: Cambridge University Press
, 2017
. 287 pp.
Omaar Hena
Omaar Hena
Omaar Hena is associate professor of English at Wake Forest University. His first book, Global Anglophone Poetry: Literary Form and Social Critique in Walcott, Muldoon, de Kok, and Nagra, appeared in 2015. His current research examines race and publics in British black and Asian poetry.
Search for other works by this author on:
Modern Language Quarterly (2019) 80 (3): 354–358.
Citation
Omaar Hena; Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature. Modern Language Quarterly 1 September 2019; 80 (3): 354–358. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-7569727
Download citation file:
Advertisement
127
Views