Dr Juha Virtanen
About
Juha is the author of Poetry and Performance During the British Poetry Revival 1960-1980: Event and Effect (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). This book examines intersections of poetry and performance during the British Poetry Revival. Its investigations are centred on four specific performance events: The First International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965; Denise Riley’s first public reading at the Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1977; Eric Mottram’s Pollock Record; and Allen Fisher’s Blood Bone Brain. Drawing upon a range of archival resources, recordings, and interviews, each chapter in the book offers detailed ‘archaeological’ accounts and analyses of these largely unexamined events as well as the potential dialogues between them. These discussions also draw upon the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, Lefevbre, Whitehead, and others. The book additionally features previously unpublished interviews with both Fisher and Riley.
Juha’s recent or ongoing research projects also include work on topics such as the role of collage and graffiti in the recent publications of Allen Fisher and Ulli Freer; the readership of modern poetry; the political implications of supervillains in comics; female poets in the British Poetry Revival; and radical politics in contemporary poetry and poetics.
Juha is also a poet. His writing in this area can be found in Back Channel Apraxia (Contraband Books 2014), –LAND (Oystercatcher Press 2016), as well as a number of small press magazines. He has performed his work across the UK, and sometimes collaborates with musicians. His current poetry project is called Doom Engines.