Tactile Poetics ─ Touch and Contemporary Writing

A new critical perspective on the relationship between text and tact in 20th- and 21st-century literature and theory

The intimate links between the page and the skin have been explored by writers for centuries. Yet despite the current interest in the surface of the body, the relationship between touching and writing remains neglected. Drawing on new debates in deconstruction and psychoanalysis, this book provides an original and timely intervention in the field. Exploring insights from Jacques Derrida and Helene Cixous, and through close readings of work by writers such as Anne Carson, Siri Hustvedt and Michael Ondaatje, Tactile Poetics investigates the law of tact that always interrupts contact, and examines the different ways that literary texts work to 'touch' their readers.

Sarah Jackson is Lecturer / Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University and Programme Leader MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She is the editor of Oxford Literary Review, 33.2 (2011), a special issue on deconstruction and poetry, and the author of two books of poetry, Pelt (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 2012, longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award) and Milk (Brighton: Pighog Press, 2008, shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award).