Poetry in the Mind: The Cognition of Contemporary Poetic Style - Paperback

by Joanna Gavins (Author)

Joanna Gavins presents some of the newest and most influential ideas in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics through clearly explained, practical analyses of the work of some of the most popular and celebrated poets currently writing in the British Isles. Through analysis of works by Jo Bell, Simon Armitage, Sinead Morrissey, John Burnside, Alice Oswald and Kate Tempest she demonstrates the practical use of cognitive frameworks as a means of understanding poetry and its effects. Gavins examines cutting edge concepts in cognition including world-building, conceptual integration, embodiment, and distributed cognition and develops our understanding of key notions in poetics such as poetic metre, performance, metaphor and intertextuality.

Each chapter of the book addresses a central poetic notion or feature of poetic style from an innovative cognitive perspective, shedding new light on established ideas about poetic creativity and language.

Back Jacket

'Great poetry places on-stage the powers and limits of human thought. Time and space, intertextuality, presence and absence, performance, metaphor: Joanna Gavins investigates masterfully what the poetry of our day teaches us about the human mind.' Mark Turner, Case Western Reserve University Poetry in the Mind is the first book-length cognitive analysis focused entirely on 21st century poetic texts and their conceptual effects. Addressing central poetic notions or features of poetic style from an innovative cognitive perspective, the book sheds new light on established ideas about poetic creativity and language. It acts as a showcase both for cutting-edge cognitive research and for the linguistic creativity of renowned poets such as Simon Armitage, Jo Bell, John Burnside, Sinéad Morrissey, Alice Oswald, and Kate Tempest. Joanna Gavins is Chair in English Language and Literature at the University of Sheffield, where she teaches courses in cognitive linguistics and stylistics.

Author Biography

Joanna Gavins is Chair of English Language and Literature at the University of Sheffield. Joanna's publications include Poetry in the Mind (EUP, 2020), Reading the Absurd (EUP, 2013) and Text World Theory: An Introduction (EUP, 2007). She is also co-editor of World Building: Discourse in the Mind (2016) and Cognitive Poetics in Practice (2003). She has published widely on stylistics, cognitive poetics, literary absurdism and contemporary poetry, and has presented her work around the world.