Collection of personal narrative poems

Location: "The World at Dusk." The Times Literary Supplement 5373 (24 March 2006): 27. ISSN 0307661 AND "The Diagnosis." The Times Literary Supplement 5417 (26 January 2007): 15. ISSN 0307661 AND "His Pantoum." The Times Literary Supplement 5437 (15 June 2007): 14. ISSN 0307661 AND "Divorce." New Writing 14 (London: Granta, 2006): 145. ISBN 1862078505 AND "A Birthmother's Catechism." The Times Literary Supplement 5450 (14 Sept 2007): 15.
The work is five poems. Its originality and significance consist in presenting a new approach to personal narrative in poetry. Contemporary British personal narrative poetry tends to follow one of two traditions: the plain-spoken confession, as espoused by A. Alvarez, and the "new narrative" that deflects and conceals the author's experience, as described by Neil Corcoran in English Poetry from 1940 and practised by Andrew Motion and James Fenton, among others. My objectives were to transform the personal narrative poem by allowing the autobiographical to be apparent while constructing a nonlinear narrative. The use of third person in such poems suggests an anthropological viewpoint, while in the first person, the restraint of detail allows for a more "open," in Lyn Hejinian's usage, richly ambiguous text.