Veronica Elizabeth Marian Forrest-Thomson (28 November 1947 – 26 April 1975) was a Scottish poet and a critical theorist. Her 1978 study Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry was reissued in 2016.
Life and education Veronica was born in Malaya to a rubber planter, John Forrest Thomson, and his wife, Jean, but grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. Alison Mark, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Language Poetry, 2001 She opted to hyphenate her surname, having originally been published under the name Veronica Forrest.
She studied at the University of Liverpool (BA, 1968) and Girton College, Cambridge (PhD, 1971) where her first supervisor was the poet J. H. Prynne.The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, Elizabeth L. Ewan et al, 2006, Edinburgh University Press, p. 125. Her Cambridge friends included the poets Wendy Mulford and Denise Riley.Virginia Blane, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 387,
Forrest-Thomson later taught at the universities of Leicester and Birmingham.
Writings Forrest-Thomson's critical study Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry was published by Manchester University Press in 1978. It was reissued with notes and an introduction by Gareth Farmer in 2016 with Shearsman press. Her poetry collections included Identi-kit (1967), the award-winning Language-Games (1971) and the posthumous On the Periphery (1976). Subsequent gatherings of her work include Collected Poems and Translations (1990) and Selected Poems (1999).COLLECTED POEMS – Veronica Forrest-Thomson: Small Press Distribution. A further Collected Poems, minus the translations, was published in 2008 by Shearsman Books with Allardyce Books.
Forrest-Thomson died in her sleep on 26 April 1975 at the age of 27, after an overdose of prescription drugs and alcohol.Alison Mark, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Language Poetry p. xi.PN Review. She was married to the writer and academic Jonathan Culler from 1971 to 1974; he became the executor of her literary estate.The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, Elizabeth L. Ewan et al, 2006, Edinburgh University Press, p. 125.Alison Mark, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Language Poetry, 2001.Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Collected Poems, Shearsman Books and Allardyce Books, 2008. In November 2019 the academic and poet Gareth Farmer replaced Culler as literary executor.Currently, Dr Gareth Farmer, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bedfordshire, is the literary executor, who in 2013 organised the establishment of the Veronica Forrest-Thomson Archive at Girton College Library, Cambridge. Papers of Veronica Forrest-Thomson, 1937–2011, held at the Girton College Archive Harriet Staff, 'Introducing the Veronica Forrest-Thomson Archive', Poetry Foundation, 2 July 2013
Further reading Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Collected Poems and Translations, 1990 Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-century Poetry, 1978 Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-century Poetry, ed. Gareth Farmer, 2016 Alison Mark, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Language Poetry, 2001 Gareth Farmer, Veronica Forrest-Thomson: Poet on the Periphery, 2017. Gareth Farmer, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Poetic Artifice and the Struggle with Forms (Sussex: unpublished PhD thesis) Gareth Farmer, "Veronica Forrest-Thomson's 'Cordelia', Tradition and the Triumph of Artifice", Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 1.1 (September, 2009) pp. 55–78 Gareth Farmer, "The slightly hysterical style of University talk: Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Cambridge", Cambridge Literary Review 1.1 (September, 2009), pp. 161–177 Isobel Armstrong, The Radical Aesthetic, 2000 Jane Dowson and Alice Entwistle, A History of Twentieth-Century British Women's Poetry, 2005 Alison Mark, "Poetic Relations and Related Poetics: Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Charles Bernstein" in Romana Huk (ed.), Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally, 2003 Christian R. Gelder, "Veronica Forrest-Thomson's ABC of Atoms: Poetry, Knowledge, Technique", Cambridge Quarterly, 51.1, (March, 2022), pp. 1–19
References
External links Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Five poems Brian Kim Stefans, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and High Artifice Peter Robinson, A review of On the Periphery James Keery, ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and the Levels of Artifice: Veronica Forrest-Thomson on J H Prynne Kenyon Review Online Web Feature https://beds.academia.edu/GarethFarmer