The piston and the pen: poetry and the Victorian industrial worker

Building on the new discoveries of the Piston, Pen & Press research project, led by Kirstie Blair, with Mike Sanders, University of Manchester and Oliver Betts, National Railway Museum, this lecture will investigate the ways in which the working-class poets of Scotland and the North of England engaged with poetry, as writers and readers, and show how verse cultures were vital in negotiating new identities and new ways of representing industrial labour. Using little-known material uncovered in local archives, Kirstie Blair suggests how important the work of these writers can be for understanding Britain’s industrial heritage.

Speaker:
Professor Kirstie Blair, Head, School of Humanities, University of Strathclyde
Kirstie Blair is Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde. She has published widely on Victorian poetry and poetics, particularly working-class poetry, poetry and religion, and poetry and the history of medicine. Her third monograph, Working Verse in Victorian Scotland: Poetry, Press, Community, is due for publication in 2019.