Introduction

For episode three of Modern-ish Poets Series 1, Mark and Seamus look at the life and work of Elizabeth Bishop, the east-coast American poet who enjoyed a limited audience, and published relatively little, in her lifetime, but whose reputation has grown enormously since her death. They discuss her exploratory approach to form, the way she domesticates what seem like heroic and mythical enterprises, and the dialectic in her work between the emotional disruption inherited from her childhood and her artistic commitment to perfectionism.

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Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and Mark Ford is Professor of English Literature at University College London.

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in November 2017, and is now available in full exclusively for Close Readings subscribers.

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