Poetic Forms &amp; Existentialism in Tom Leonard’s &lt;i&gt;access to the silence: poems and posters, 1984–2004&lt;/i&gt;

Theresa Munoz

doi:10.16995/biip.34

Abstract

This article on Glasgow poet Tom Leonard explores his visual poetry and his poems with existentialist leanings in his fourth poetry collection: access to the silence: poems and posters, 1984–2004. This paper analyses Leonard’s more experimental forms such as his poetry sequences and poster poems, as well as taking a look at his explorations in existentialism. The article aims to widen discussion on Leonard’s work and find similarities in form and content to other poets in the UK. Previous criticism focuses solely on his previous work in urban phonetic dialect, and through discussing how Leonard’s poems use poetic forms to explore philosophical concepts, this article aims to address this imbalance.

Highlights

Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service
In the 1960s Leonard’s Six Glasgow Poems (1969)[2] appeared to emulate the urban poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Stephen Mulrine, and, like Edwin Morgan, challenged the prescriptive limits of Hugh MacDiarmid’s synthetic and generic brand of Scots, Lallans.[3]. This counterreaction towards Lallans was made by all three poets through the publication of their poems written in urban phonetic dialect, representing the marginalised voices of the Glaswegian working-classes
Rather, up to the individual to shape his or her identity by choosing certain projects and taking action in the world.’[56]. It can be argued that Leonard’s use of poetry which encourages living by existentialist principles is his method of ‘taking action in the world’ against societal attitudes which he believes infringe on a person’s sense of freedom

Summary

Introduction

Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. Poetic form and existentialism in Tom Leonard’s access to the silence: poems and posters, 1984–2004

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Conclusion