Veronica Forrest-Thomson


Veronica Elizabeth Marian Forrest Thomson was a poet and a critical theorist brought up in Scotland. Her 1978 critical study Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry was reissued in 2016.

Life and education

Born in Malaya to rubber planter John Forrest Thomson and his wife Jean, she grew up in Glasgow, Scotland.
She studied at the University of Liverpool and Girton College, Cambridge. Her friends at Cambridge included the poets Wendy Mulford and Denise Riley.
She 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. 'Poetic Artifice', edited with notes and an introduction by Gareth Farmer, was reissued in 2016 with . Her poetry collections included Identi-kit, the award-winning Language-Games and the posthumous On the Periphery. Subsequent gatherings of her work include Collected Poems and Translations and Selected Poems. A further Collected Poems, minus the translations, was published in 2008 by Shearsman Books in association with Allardyce Books.
Forrest-Thomson died in her sleep on 26 April 1975 at the age of 27, as the result of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs and alcohol. She was married to the writer and academic Jonathan Culler from 1971 to 1974; he became the executor of her literary estate. In November 2019, Jonathan Culler passed the role of literary executor to the academic and poet Gareth Farmer. In 2013, Gareth Farmer organised the establishment of the Veronica Forrest-Thomson Archive at Girton College Library, Cambridge.