Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice vigorously engages with the Why? and the How? of prose poetry, a form that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity.

Anne Caldwell is a freelance writer and a lecturer in creative writing for the Open University and has completed a PhD in prose poetry and creative writing at the University of Bolton in 2020. She is a member of the International Poetry Studies Institute (I.P.S.I.) International Prose Poetry Project and the author of four collections of poetry.

Oz Hardwick is a European poet and academic, whose work has been widely published in international journals and anthologies. He has published nine full collections and chapbooks, including Learning to Have Lost (2018) which won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry. Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.

Introduction

Anne Caldwell and Oz Hardwick

1 Protean Manifestations and Diverse Shapes: Defining and Understanding Strategies of the Contemporary Prose Poem

Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington

2 Prose Poetry and the Resistance to Narrative

Oz Hardwick

3 "In the Eye of the Beholder": Prose Poetry in Dialogue between Reader and Poet

Hannah Stone

4 Nobody's Storybook: Reading Russell Edson for the Wrong Reasons

Nicholas Lauridsen

5 "Borders on edges, where skin stops, or begins": The Prose Poem's Relationship with the Discourses of Fashion and Food, with Particular Reference to Charles Baudelaire, Gertrude Stein, and Harryette Mullen

Susie Campbell

6 The Contemporary Vernacular: Exploring Intersections of Architecture and Prose Poetry

Anne Caldwell

7 "Image Machine": Gaspar Orozco's Book of the Peony and the Prose Poem Sequence as Perceptual Trick

Helen Tookey

8 Writing the Prose Poem: An Insider's Perspective on an Outsider Artform

Ian Seed

9 "A form of howling. A form of chanting. A form of looking out for each other": Poetics and Politics of the Contemporary Indian-English Prose Poem

Divya Nadkarni

10 Collaboration, Conversation, and Adaptation: The Prose Poetry Project and Renga Attitude

Jen Webb

11 Framing Catastrophe: The Ekphrastic Prose Poem

Patrick Wright

12 "An interlude suspended": Historical Biography through the Lens of Prose Poetry

Edwin Stockdale

13 Who are the Contemporary Symbolists? The Prose Poem and the Decorative-Subjective Approach

Ruth Stacey

14 One Foot; Many Places: The Prose Poem's Art of Standing Still While Travelling

Jane Monson