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Summary

Chapter 4 examines twenty-first-century debates over canons, canon formations, and publishing in the writing of Bernardine Evaristo, Lemn Sissay, and Daljit Nagra. In particular, I pursue the aesthetic strategies they adopt to assert the centrality of Black British culture as a renewable canon in the making and remaking of Britishness. Conversely, the poets considered here also recognize how they operate within – and often seek to challenge – cultural institutions advancing precepts of diversity and inclusion even as their writing self-consciously acknowledges systemic oppression in contemporary Britain and the highly unequal domain of the publishing scene in particular. Whether in Evaristo’s novel in verse The Emperor’s Babe, Lemn Sissay’s public “landmark poems,” or Daljit Nagra’s British Museum, these authors lend to their work a progressive politics by excavating, revising, and transforming forgotten histories and counter-memories of violence for the sake of intervening in public discourses over race and national belonging.

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Chapter 4 - Canons, Publishing, and Publics

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Chapter 4 - Canons, Publishing, and Publics

Summary