The Formal Genesis of Basil Bunting’s Briggflatts

This essay examines the genesis of Basil Bunting’s major late-modernist poem Briggflatts (1966). The distinctive stylistic mode Bunting introduced in the breakthrough statement of Briggflatts’ opening section has been examined in various ways. But as yet there has been no sustained attempt to track the development of this mode as it came together in late 1964 and early 1965. Through close attention to key sources from Bunting’s draft manuscripts – notably the ‘Briggflatts notebook’ held at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo – this essay attempts to address this critical lacuna.