Hedgehogs is an extended sequence of poems and verse-essays about Jacques Derrida by a well-known philosopher, literary theorist, and commentator on his writings. Their topics range widely across the full span of Derrida's work, treated here in formal (rhyming and metrical) verse of a variously witty, ironic, reflective, discursive, and narrative character. Norris's aim is partly to provide a way into that work for readers with a chief interest in poetry and partly to offer fresh points of engagement for philosophers and literary critics, including those who have so far been resistant to it. But his object is also to explore the possibility of playing off formal verse structures against Derrida's very different, broadly symbolist-modernist idea of what poetry can and should be in the wake of practitioners like Mallarmé and Paul Celan. By so doing Norris makes a case - contra the advocates of free verse - for the exploratory-creative rather than restrictive or expression-cramping role of rhyme and meter. These serve at best as formal constraints that liberate thought into semantic, conceptual and imaginative regions beyond anything that might be envisaged by writers of straightforward expository prose, or indeed free verse. Thus they are highly suited to philosophical poetry, especially where it intersects with a mode of thought - like Derrida's - that lives very much in and through its singular resources of linguistic inventiveness. Altogether these poems make a notable contribution to the currently fast-growing field of creative criticism.

Christopher Norris is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. In his early career he taught English Literature, then moved to Philosophy via Literary Theory, and has now moved back in the direction of creative writing. He has published widely on the topic of deconstruction and is the author of more than thirty books on aspects of philosophy, literature, the history of ideas, and music. More recently he has turned to poetry in various genres, including that of philosophical verse. The present volume is a sequel to Hedgehogs: verse-reflections after Derrida, published by utopos in 2020. Among his other collections are The Cardinal's Dog, For the Tempus-Fugitives, The Matter of Rhyme, A Partial Truth, and Socrates at Verse. He has lectured and held visiting posts at universities around the world, and his books have been translated into many languages.