Student profiles
Imogen Durant
Email:imogen.durant@manchester.ac.uk
Twitter: @imidurant
Previous Education
MA English and American Studies, University of Manchester, Distinction, 2015
BA English Literature, University of Manchester, First Class, 2014
Thesis Title
Re-Viewing British Poetry on the Margins, 1927-1950
Supervisors
Professor John McAuliffe (University of Manchester)
Dr James Bainbridge (University of Liverpool)
Research Summary
My thesis examines work by four marginal writers – Lynette Roberts, ASJ Tessimond, Dawson Jackson and H.D. – to discuss the cinema’s influence on poetry during the 1930s and 1940s in Britain. Using archival sources from each of these poets, I am considering the ways in which poetry was shaped by the increasing mechanisation of art. During this period of intense political pressure, the most popular and widely distributed work tended to speak to the historical moment in which it was produced. I argue that through analysing works that were less widely circulated, new understandings of the relationship between poetry, cinema and politics emerge, many of which still resonate today.
Research Interests
British and American Poetry; 20th Century literature and film; literary archives; visual arts.