Challenging artistic, cultural, social and scholarly hierarchies, this international and interdisciplinary edited collection unpicks the intricate relationship between the languages of textiles and poetry.

Navigating the frayed boundary between fabric and poetic form, The Poetics of Fabric explores the work of over 30 scholars, poets, makers and artists across more than 18 countries - alongside unnamed domestic makers and writers - from the Middle Ages to today.

Structured around themes of memory, collective geographies and histories, and metaphor and metamorphosis, with a further section dedicated to contemporary creative practitioners, it guides scholars from a 7th-century Irish bog, through 20th-century Iran, to the speculative geographies of Planet G-101/2; from Dante's use of weaving as a metaphor for poetic creation to a global framework for craft metaphors in contemporary women's poetry; from Joy Harjo's use of poetic and material lines to strengthen Indigenous American cultural, ceremonial, and sacred memory to embroidered Scandinavian graphic novels; from textiles, poetry and songs as resistance in colonial and capitalist contexts to the emerging binaries of domestic knitting and computer programming.

Drawing on methodologies from literary analysis, art history and material culture to intermedial studies, digital humanities and intersectional feminism, this expansive collection presents diverse scholarly and creative perspectives in dialogue. Working to challenge entrenched scholarly and cultural norms, The Poetics of Fabric advances a growing area in theory and practice, and considers the constraining and liberating potential of textiles and poetry in their myriad forms and folds.