Incarceration in the Poetry of Anna Mendelssohn

The first book-length study of the poet, artist and activist Anna Mendelssohn (1948-2009), this book establishes Mendelssohn as one of the most important avant-garde British poets of her generation and explores her contribution to the powerful tradition of women writing enclosure and escape.

Mendelssohn was herself incarcerated in Holloway Women's Prison between 1971-76, and her bold and inventive poetry is haunted by forms of enclosure and driven by the desire to escape. Informed by extensive original archival research, this book reads Mendelssohn's late modernist lyric alongside the poetry of her avant-garde influences and contemporaries, including Nancy Cunard, Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Riley, restoring to view lost works and lost literary networks.