<strong>This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.</strong> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: black; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">An introduction to the Anna Mendelssohn special issue of the <i>Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry</i>. This collection is based on the proceedings of the Anna Mendelssohn Symposium, held at the University of Sussex in February 2017. T</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; color: black; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">he symposium took as its epigraph the title of a Mendelssohn poem: ‘Poetry does not deserve evil keepers’. This title sets down a challenge for readers and critics of Mendelssohn’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? </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: black; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">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.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><o:p></o:p></span>