Book Launch: Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought by Paul Magee

Drill Hall Gallery Director, Terence Maloon chats with Paul Magee about the links between everyday speech and the writing of poetry.

Paul Magee’s new book Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought (Rowman and Littlefield: London and New York, 2022) explores the relationship between the composition of poems and the composition of speech. Drawing on literary history, linguistics and cognitive science, the book unpacks the connection between the way words come to us when we are speaking and how they arrive when we are composing words for the page, to then write them down. The book explores the phenomenon of revision from these speech-compositional angles as well, and includes a theory as to what distinguishes verse from prose, at the point of production. 23 research interviews with major contemporary Anglophone poets help the author negotiate this terrain, keeping the scholarly materials responsive to what writing poems really involves. The end result is an inside look at the phenomenon of poetic thinking.

Paul and Terrence will discuss the book at 2pm on Saturday 23rd July in the ANU’s Drill Hall Gallery, with Catherine Roger’s stunning photographs all around them:

Refreshments will be provided.

Please note that Paul will be holding an Online Launch of Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought on Thursday 21st July at 7.30pm, via zoom. Paul will give a 30 minute presentation on some of the book’s key ideas, followed by a live Q+A. For all further details, please see this link.