“Voiceprints of an Astronaut” is a multi-faceted collection of poems that explores the fluid borders between memory and the imagined, the personal and the sociohistorical. The “voiceprints” of the title poem are the words, both imagined and real, of the only twelve men who ever walked on the moon. My own device, of an imagined ‘interview’ with figures from history, is deployed in the title poem. It is also used, for example, in the form of voiceprints from R.L. Stevenson, (“Tusitala”), Mary Queen of Scots’ maidservant, (“Beheaded”,“A Prayer fir James VI”), an acrobat-magician from the Qin Dynasty, (Bi xi Terracotta) and a time-travelling 14th century monk transposed to the Scottish Poetry Library (“In the Library”). In poems such as “Earthrise”, “Starlight from Saturn”, “In the Library”, and “Lines for Edwin Morgan” the tone is lyrical, taking the form of the sonnet, or sometimes simply reflecting the ghost of a sonnet framework. Recent events such as the Haiti earthquake are reflected, at times, by a purely personal response, such as in “Beads”, while poems about the Aids epidemic in the 80’s, (“Lunch-times with Rick”, “The Quilts”) spring from a period as Medical Correspondent for the Guardian, covering Aids conferences in London, Stockholm, Montreal and San Francisco. Others, such as “Roosevelt’s Bats”, “Fire-and-Forget” and “At Sea” are responses to modern war and conflict. In all of these, my aim has been to explore the political through the personal. The poems in this collection reflect an adult life split, almost equally, between two cities: Edinburgh and London. Regular visits too, to North America are another influence. An important part of the journey involved in writing these poems was a discovery of a Scots voice I thought I’d misplaced, only to find again, in poems such as “Beheaded” or “Haud tae me”. Some of these poems are autobiographical, dealing with parenthood, childhood, and growing up. Others, such as “Dana Point” or “Boy with Frog” celebrate a moment, a time and a place. In the case of the series of poems beginning with “Jim” and ending with “Black and White” the places and times take the form of memories, both in Scotland and Canada, of a much older sister. The critical essay that forms the second part of this thesis is entitled “Politics and the Personal in the Sonnet and Sonnet Sequence: Edwin Morgan's “Glasgow Sonnets”, Tony Harrison's “from The School of Eloquence” and selected sonnets by Paul Muldoon”. The first chapter examines the use of the sonnet form in Edwin Morgan’s “Glasgow Sonnets”; the second chapter concerns the sonnets written by Tony Harrison in from The School of Eloquence and Other Poems, published in 1978, while the third chapter looks at selected sonnets by Paul Muldoon.

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Séparé du Sud pastoral, de la capitale londonienne et d’Oxbridge par une frontière moins géographique que culturelle, le Nord de l'Angleterre a une géographie variable en fonction des besoins du discours. Une constante discursive parcourt cependant la littérature sur la région : marqué par ses rudes conditions climatiques, jadis peuplé de barbares, en butte aux invasions et ravagé par la Révolution Industrielle, le Nord serait en marge de la sphère poétique. Or, à partir des années 1960, dans le cadre d'une redécouverte des marges de l'ex-empire et d’une dissolution des frontières nationales due à la mondialisation, le Nord revendique son droit à figurer à part entière au cœur de la carte poétique. Les poésies de Basil Bunting, de Ted Hughes, de Tony Harrison, et de Simon Armitage nous invitent à parcourir ces Nords géographiques, historiques, culturels, mais avant tout poétiques. Ces quatre poètes, nés dans le Nord, ont en commun d’avoir pris une distance, sinon physique, du moins intellectuelle, avec la région, ce qui leur a permis de poser un regard critique. Le mouvement nostalgique de retour à la terre natale amorce une réappropriation sur le plan de l’imaginaire de cet espace colonisé par des discours dépréciatifs. Les poètes y découvrent une source intarissable de créativité et partent en quête d’une langue qui résorbe l’écart entre nordicité et poéticité : l'impur accent barbare devient axiome poétique. Comment cette poésie du Nord met-elle en question l'anglicité et la tradition poétique anglaise en même temps qu'elle la structure ? Si « poésie du Nord » il y a, quelles en sont les réalisations dans la voix, le rythme et la forme poétiques ? / Divided from the pastoral South, London and Oxbridge by a frontier that is less geographical than cultural, Northern England has been constructed through shifting discourses. One discursive feature though has been constantly present in the literature on the region : since the place is forbidding (not the least because of its grim weather), since it used to be populated with barbaric tribes and provided a buffer against even more barbarian invasions, since it was devastated by the Industrial Revolution, the North is excluded from the poetic sphere. Yet since the 1960s, in a context of peripheries emerging from the former empire and of national frontiers disappearing due to globalisation, the North has claimed its right to hold a central place on the poetic map. Basil Bunting, Ted Hughes, Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage have participated in reconfiguring geographical, historical, cultural, but, most importantly, poetic Norths. The nostalgic return to the region where they were born and bred reads as a creative and critical reappropriation of a space that has been colonised by derogatory discourses. The poets discover an inexhaustible source of inspiration and set on a quest for a language that would bridge the gap between northerness and poetry : their impure barbarian accent becomes a poetic axiom. How does this Northern English poetry question Englishness and the English poetic tradition while constructing them ? If « Northern English poetry » does exist, how does it show in terms of poetic voice, rhythms and forms ?