Ben Wilkinson

Scholarly study of the British author Don Paterson’s work may be in its infancy, but the poem ‘An Elliptical Stylus’, from his first collection of poetry Nil Nil (1993), has already attracted a considerable degree of critical attention. This essay discusses various appraisals of the poem, within a detailed exploration of the ways in which divides between, and anxieties surrounding, social classes in contemporary Britain are re-evaluated and redressed within the work. It argues that the poem’s stylistic techniques – its estrangement of the ordinary through perceptually transformative use of quotidian detail, augmented by direct address to the reader and use of personae – also serve to expose the frequently mutable, incoherent nature of personal identity, destabilising broader notions of a unified sense of self. As such, the essay proposes that ‘An Elliptical Stylus’ represents an embryonic ars poetica, and should be viewed not only as a crucial poem in the stylistic and underlying thematic development of Paterson’s writing, but as a key poem in the postmodern canon.