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.
