A Strong Explosion in the Sky - A Re-evauation of Stevie Smith

我的研究重点是对诗人史蒂维·史密斯(Stevie Smith，1902-1971)的重新审视，他是一位非传统的冒险和复杂的诗人，以无政府主义的方式开辟了英国诗歌。尽管最近有批评性的研究，但与战后同龄人相比，她的诗歌被低估了。我的研究将论证她是一位重要的诗人，通过展示她的接受和声誉的批评史，探索为什么以及如何我们应该重视史密斯，并关注她的诗歌技巧。我还将讨论与史密斯有密切关系的当代英国诗人的作品，他们的诗歌是史密斯的重要先驱，特别是艾米莉·贝瑞、塞利玛·希尔和达尔吉特·纳格拉，从而论证了她的诗歌的现实意义。2015年出版的《史提夫·史密斯诗集与素描集》收录了此前未发表的49首诗，其中一些意义重大，使我的研究显得格外及时。我的创作项目将从史密斯的一系列诗歌中获得灵感，她在这些诗歌中表达了宗教的矛盾心理。我会考虑她的长诗，你怎么看？在那里，她展示了知识的严谨性，并提出了探索性的宗教问题。与她的一些技巧相呼应，我将在我自己的背景下引用基督教和伊斯兰教来思考宗教的魔力和幻灭，以及以宗教名义犯下的暴行。史密斯的评论者经常将赞扬和屈尊混为一谈。我将借鉴女性主义关于女性的文学理论和经典来说明史密斯的诗歌在她一生中非常男性化的诗歌世界中是如何被接受的。有迹象表明，史密斯在倡导方面失败了，这继续影响着她的地位。我首先从T·S·艾略特的散文传统和他声称艺术的情感是客观的个人才能开始，我将讨论史密斯创造这种情感的技巧，作为诗歌生活的基础。我将考察传记对她声誉的影响，并询问她塑造的公众形象是如何影响她的地位的。我将考虑她为人熟知的诗歌表演对她声誉的影响，我将强调史密斯如何通过她对各种文学文本的重新创作，与正统的男性诗人对话，而不是从今天的意义上说，来自黑人和亚洲背景的作家，包括我，被认为是与帝国对话的。用我的诗人的洞察力，我将评估史密斯的诗歌及其在诗歌传统中的根源，例如，在18世纪的社会讽刺中，在布莱克的远见卓识的诗歌中。我将考察现代主义对她作品的影响。我将重点介绍她的技巧方面，如她令人印象深刻的音域，她的正式变化(包括民谣，散文诗，字母)，她对韵律和节奏的部署和削弱，以及她不稳定的语气。史密斯是我们中间的一员，但她在很大程度上是以一小部分诗歌而闻名，特别是流行的不挥手而是溺水，她需要被呈现和肯定为一位成熟、探索、强大的诗人，具有休斯、拉金和普拉斯的地位。

The focus of my research is a reconsideration of the poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971), an unconventional poet of risk and complexity who opened out English poetry in anarchic ways. Despite recent critical studies, her poetry is undervalued in comparison with that of her postwar contemporaries. My research will argue that she is major poet, by presenting a critical history of her reception and reputation, exploring why and how we should value Smith and focusing on her poetic technique. I'll also discuss work by current British poets who have an affinity to Smith and to whose poetry she is an important forerunner, particularly Emily Berry, Selima Hill and Daljit Nagra, thus arguing for the current relevance of her poems. The publication of The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith in 2015 includes 49 poems unpublished earlier, some highly significant, making my research especially timely. My creative project will draw inspiration from a range of Smith's poems in which she expresses religious ambivalence. I'll consider her long poem How do you see? where she displays intellectual rigour and asks probing religious questions. Echoing some of her techniques, I'll draw on Christianity and Islam in my own background to consider the enchantment and disenchantment of religion and atrocities committed in its name.Reviewers of Smith have often mixed praise with condescension. I'll draw on feminist literary theory on women and the canon to illuminate the reception of Smith's poetry in the very male poetry world of her lifetime. The indications are that Smith lost out in terms of advocacy and that this continues to affect her status. Taking my critical bearings initially from T.S. Eliot's essay Tradition and the Individual Talent in which he claims that the emotion of art is impersonal, I'll discuss Smith's skill at creating such emotion as fundamental to the life of the poem. I'll examine the effect of biography on her reputation, and ask how the public persona she cultivated has affected her status. I'll consider the effect on her reputation of the poetry performances for which she became well-known.I'll emphasise how Smith, through her reworkings of a variety of literary texts, talks back to canonical male poets rather in the sense that today writers from a Black and Asian background, including myself, are said to talk back to the Empire. Using my poet's insight, I'll evaluate Smith's poems and their roots in a poetic tradition, in 18th century social satire, for example, and in Blake's visionary poetry. I'll examine the influence on her work of modernism. I'll highlight aspects of her technique such as her impressive vocal range, her formal variety (to include the ballad, the essay poem, letters), her deployment and undercutting of rhyme and rhythm and her destabilizing tone. Smith is in our midst, yet she is known largely for a small group of poems, particularly the popular Not Waving But Drowning, and needs to be presented and affirmed as a sophisticated, probing, powerful poet of the stature of Hughes, Larkin and Plath.