The workers speak

In 1845, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, 'I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none'. Working-class women poets of the eighteenth-century have been ignored by scholars for 200 years. I aim to reconnect these forgotten poets with their 'granddaughters', both by producing original critical scholarship on their poems and by driving contemporary writers' creative engagement with them. I will be writing a journal article, supervised by Dr Bobker, whose expertise in the eighteenth-century poetics of social space corresponds with my doctoral research. Also, my project will contribute to the department's interdisciplinary research culture through a series of impact activities. These are likely to include: a blog post on the poets, Little and Taylor, for the new Writing Beyond the Room project; a reading of my own poetry, for the 'SpokenWeb' project; hosting an introductory seminar to little-known poets at the Centre for Expanded Poetics, and assisting with the organisation of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference 2023.