Basil Bunting: A Critical Introduction

Basil Cheesman Bunting is a significant British Modernist poet who gains his fame from the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. His lifelong interest in music led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud. He is an accomplished reader of his own works. The work of Basil Bunting refutes the long-held contention that modernism is an exclusively American phenomenon which began on British soil. Integrally connected with Ezra Poundthis movement in poetry began in England in 1908.The form of Bunting’s poetry shows a similarity in its lucidity and sparseness with Pound’s and that of other modernists such as T.S. Eliot.