Introduction

Abstract

Virtanen offers an insightful summary of the existing scholarship about poetry and performance, as well as the elusiveness of the term ‘performance’ itself. Crucially, the chapter distinguishes Virtanen’s approach from the foci that inform previous studies on the subject, which frequently address broader theories and histories of modern poetry readings. Instead Virtanen directs his attention to examining individual ‘event histories’ of performances that occurred during the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to providing an overview of the subsequent chapters, Virtanen explores the methodological implications of researching performances through archival documentation. The Introduction concludes with a discussion of the ‘event’—as theorized by Whitehead, Deleuze and others—as a site of intersubjective authorship and cacophonous collectivity.