William Welstead
Search for other papers by William Welstead in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
Competing narratives on the farm and in poetry
Ted Hughes and Kay Syrad
in Writing on sheep
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526156587.00011
Online Publication Date:
25 May 2021
Abstract only
Log-in for full text

In Chapter 7 poems from two poets are read, against their very different experience on sheep farms: one as an owner-occupier in Devon and the other as a writer in residence on three farms in Dorset. By the time Ted Hughes acquired Moortown Farm in Devon, which he farmed jointly with his father-in-law, he had already developed his ideas about how to treat animals in his poetry. This chapter considers how domesticated animals fit into his literary practice. The case is made for Hughes to be seen as having a primary influence in the animal turn in the humanities, in a way that complements his importance in wider ecological literary criticism. In 2014 poet Kay Syrad and sculptor Chris Drury were ‘embedded’ on three organic farms in Dorset. Kay Syrad has ‘crafted a narrative which witnesses what it is to be a farmer’ through her own poetry and recorded interviews with the farmers. The chapter reads this poetry and prose from the viewpoint of the animal turn. It also explores the very different narratives and values deployed by Hughes during what he saw as a fundamental shift in Devon farming, and those of contemporary organic and naturalistic farming practice.
  • Collapse
  • Expand

All of MUP's digital content including Open Access books and journals is now available on manchesterhive.

 

Writing on sheep

Ecology, the animal turn and sheep in poetry

eISBN:
9781526156587
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Writing on sheep

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 161 32 1
Full Text Views 4 2 0
PDF Downloads 5 4 0
Cover Hartly House, Calcutta

Hartly House, Calcutta

Phebe Gibbes

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
13 Feb 2019
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
Redeem Token

This novel is a designedly political document. Written at the time of the Hastings impeachment and set in the period of Hastings’s Orientalist government, Hartly House, Calcutta (1789) represents a dramatic delineation of the Anglo-Indian encounter. The novel constitutes a significant intervention in the contemporary debate concerning the nature of Hastings’s rule of India by demonstrating that it was characterised by an atmosphere of intellectual sympathy and racial tolerance. Within a few decades the Evangelical and Anglicising lobbies frequently condemned Brahmans as devious beneficiaries of a parasitic priestcraft, but Phebe Gibbes’s portrayal of Sophia’s Brahman and the religion he espouses represent a perception of India dignified by a sympathetic and tolerant attempt to dispel prejudice.
Cover Crossing borders and queering citizenship

Crossing borders and queering citizenship

Civic reading practice in contemporary American and Canadian writing

Author:
Zalfa Feghali

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
16 Apr 2019
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
Redeem Token

Can reading make us better citizens? This book sheds light on how the act of reading can be mobilised as a powerful civic tool in service of contemporary civil and political struggles for minority recognition, rights, and representation in North America. Crossing borders and queering citizenship reimagines the contours of contemporary citizenship by connecting queer and citizenship theories to the idea of an engaged reading subject. This book offers a new approach to studying the act of reading, theorises reading as an integral element of the basic unit of the state: the citizen. By theorising the act of reading across borders as a civic act that queers citizenship, the book advances an alternative model of belonging through civic readerly engagement. Exploring work by seven US, Mexican, Canadian, and Indigenous authors, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Dorothy Allison, Gregory Scofield, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Erín Moure, Junot Díaz, and Yann Martel, the book offers sensitive interpretations of how reading can create citizenship practices that foreground and value recognition, rights, and representation for all members of a political system.
Cover Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson

Author:
David Brauner

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
12 Jan 2021
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
Redeem Token

This is a comprehensive and definitive study of the Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson. It offers lucid, detailed and nuanced readings of each of Jacobson’s novels, and makes a powerful case for the importance of his work in the landscape of contemporary fiction. Focusing on the themes of comedy, masculinity and Jewishness, the book emphasises the richness and diversity of Jacobson’s work. Often described by others as ‘the English Philip Roth’ and by himself as ‘the Jewish Jane Austen’, Jacobson emerges here as a complex and often contradictory figure: a fearless novelist; a combative public intellectual; a polemical journalist; an unapologetic elitist and an irreverent outsider; an exuberant iconoclast and a sombre satirist. Never afraid of controversy, Jacobson tends to polarise readers; but, love him or hate him, he is difficult to ignore. This book gives him the thorough consideration and the balanced evaluation that he deserves.