@article{fb0733a201644db08b03fa3f9863a4e3,
title = "{\textquoteleft}Poetry does not deserve evil keepers{\textquoteright}",
abstract = "An introduction to the Anna Mendelssohn special issue of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. This collection is based on the proceedings of the Anna Mendelssohn Symposium, held at the University of Sussex in February 2017. The symposium took as its epigraph the title of a Mendelssohn poem: {\textquoteleft}Poetry does not deserve evil keepers{\textquoteright}. This title sets down a challenge for readers and critics of Mendelssohn{\textquoteright}s work, compelling us to ask: what does it mean to be good keepers of (her) poetry? How is the literary critic to deal with the biographical and political contexts – such as her incarceration for anti-capitalist activism, or the precarity of her later life in Cambridge – which intrude upon readings of her texts? We then sketch a brief biography of Mendelssohn, and discuss approaches to reading her complex and elusive poetry. Lastly, we outline the articles and responses that make up this special issue.",
author = "Eleanor Careless and Vicky Sparrow",
note = "Funding information: We want to acknowledge the many forms of support we have received in putting this collection together. Grants from the Centre for Modernist Studies at the University of Sussex and the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck, University of London supported the initial symposium. Many thanks are due to all the speakers, performers and attendees of the symposium whose ideas have found their way into the work presented here in myriad ways; thanks especially to Mendelssohn{\textquoteright}s family and friends who attended and generously allowed the use of her artwork, poems and archival material. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to our keynote speaker and contributor Sara Crangle for her tireless work in bringing the Anna Mendelssohn Archive to the University of Sussex – as well as for her meticulous editing of Mendelssohn{\textquoteright}s Collected. We thank Gareth Farmer and Scott Thurston, the General Editors of JBIIP during the production of this special issue, for their patience and support, our anonymous peer reviewers, and our huge thanks, of course, to all the contributors to this special issue.",
year = "2023",
month = may,
day = "17",
doi = "10.16995/bip.10279",
language = "English",
volume = "15",
pages = "1--14",
journal = "Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry",
issn = "1758-2733",
publisher = "Open Library of Humanities",
number = "1",
}