| dc.description.abstract | This chapter explores a neglected aspect of mid-twentieth-century poetry: the creative and
economic interplay between architecture, language, and form. It takes as a focal point the work of
a lesser-known poet, F.T. Prince, making use of underexplored material in his archive. Such poetry
calls for closer critical attention to the re-fashioning of material across disciplines. For instance, the
‘delightful voids ‘ and ‘long fractures’ of Prince’s work oscillate between word and sculptural matter,
creating ‘fugitive’ pieces that are at once verbally and spatially coercive. It offers a case in which
twentieth-century poetry, through the architecture of the page, subtly and insistently reminds
readers of the politics and economics of its production as commissioned word and work.
Bringing to light material from the new Prince archive, this chapter examines the author’s skilful
negotiations of the processes of artistic dissemination and patronage, as well as his intimate
relationship with the politics of commission and production across historical time. It reads early
modern and twentieth-century buildings – in print and in place – not as neutral structures, but as
forms of argument that persuade and coerce, in their inhabitability. It argues for closer attention in
current poetic criticism to the materiality of the work, which foregrounds its fraught aesthetic and
economic self-interest. Prince’s poetry, in reaching back to cinquecento sculpture and artwork,
insists that its readers recognise that the artist’s skill in physical rendering – in the praise-poem, the
commemorative object, the structure built or work painted to ‘your’ honour – is required in order
successfully to negotiate a commissioner’s and an audience’s, as well as its own agendas. | en_GB |
