Posted by Scott Thurston on 2023-03-30

Today, we publish Callie Gardner's beautiful essay on Anna Mendelssohn and Veronica Forrest-Thomson. This article is published posthumously, following the tragic loss of Callie in July 2021. Earlier that year, Callie had signed off the final version of their article, and was looking forward to the work being published in its present form. In their essay, Callie generously models ways of reading resistant and elliptical poetry, writing that ‘a Mendelssohnian reading is conducted with our eyes closed […] moving along by a feel’ for the way in which a poem works. Our thanks to Martin Kettle & Ruth Gardner for kindly allowing permission for this article to be published.