Author event: Poetry and Bondage

Join us at the Cambridge University Press Bookshop for an evening celebrating Andrea Brady’s award-winning work, Poetry and Bondage: A History and Theory of Lyric Constraint, winner of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.

In this landmark study, Brady reimagines the lyric not as an expression of freedom, but as a form shaped by and entangled with structures of constraint: political, social, and aesthetic. From ancient poetics to contemporary verse, Poetry and Bondage offers a profound exploration of how language, form, and power intersect in the making of poetry.

The evening will feature a conversation between Andrea Brady and John Wilkinson (University of Chicago), followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

“... monumental …” — John Hawke, Australian Book Review

“Capacious, ambitious, judgmental, and obviously valuable.” — Stephanie Burt, Critical Inquiry

“... a much-needed re-evaluation of the now common understanding of lyric as an expression of human freedom and transcendence.” — Sarah Dowling, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

“A superb and invigorating collection, breaking ground to discover the figure of our dream of lyric song in all its lavish beauty, primitivist rhetoric and longing for ancient home in the language of the I’s eye seeing itself to abstraction.” — Adam Piette, Blackbox Manifold

Accessibility Information

This event will be quite informal with space for attendees to mingle with one another in a relaxed setting. There will be a small number of seats made available for anyone who needs one. Please get in touch if you have particular needs that you would like us to consider in advance.

Access is via our main entrance on Trinity Street, by street level and there are not steps or ledges.

There are 2 single-person bathrooms, including one large enough to fit a wheelchair with the door closed.