In stating that poetic form be ‘centre stage in any discussion of poetry’ Hurley and O’Neill (2012) propose, ‘Form is a poem’s principle of life. It is protean, multiple, ever-changing’. This seminar invites perspectives on the architectonics of anglophone (Britain, the Caribbean, North America) long form poetry and its ‘protean, multiple, ever-changing’ capacities, through focusing upon Black (here understood as of African descent) diasporic, poetic innovation. The breadth of this regional reach aims to comparatively situate papers according to what Paul Gilroy terms, ‘ex-­ centric communicative circuitry that has enabled dispersed populations to converse, interact and even synchronise’ (1996). We will centralise un(der)represented perspectives from the mid-nineteenth century (with the ascent of the dramatic monologue) up to the present.

Critical and creative consensus conventionally positions the long poem as ‘the highest expression of literary ambition and excellence, particularly in its epic guise’ (Askin and Greve 2024). How might following diasporic routes revise the epic tradition with its patriarchal characteristics of warriors, quests and journeys? Diaspora automatically highlights ‘space’ in literary studies: geographical spaces travelled, settlement, the psychologies and emotions of ‘selves’ who move to/from and inhabit cultural spaces. Despite semblances of common ground, how might long form poetry produce, ‘paradigm shattering critical interpretations of one’s culture, in both sociohistorical and literary sense’ (DuPlessis 2023)? 

The avant-gardism of the seminar’s discursive remit is crucial in considering work still frequently minoritised in mainstream literary historiography (as single chapter, or inclusion of a few poets in a large volume of white authors). Comparative focus upon diasporic voices offers fresh possibilities for connecting legacies, mindful of Mercer’s advocacy of ‘an enriching site of aesthetic experience’ (2006). The long form provides a capacious poetic vehicle for cultural reclamation (posterity), cultural valuing (prestige) for groups positioned on the periphery of critical legitimation processes. Seminar presentations might consider a plethora of implications: how the long poem functions as expressive repository, countering brevity or truncation of certain lives in history - what Black British poet Fred D’Aguiar describes as summoning ‘literature from the past to assist in my orchestrations of the present’ (2025); how it has been shaped (and shapes), envelops, and accommodates affiliative genres; the effects of interpolated genres, polyphonic speaker formations; how the interplay of a range of articulatory features –‘inter-textuality’ (Frow) ,‘poeticity’ (Jakobson), court alertness to the poem’s ‘aurality’ (Bernstein), and sustain a ‘resistant orality’ (Mullen). Papers might explore the long form poem in relation to: biopic, social critique, reportage, témoinages, archives, and music compositional features.