Poetic forms & existentialism in Tom Leonard's access to the silence: poems and posters, 1984–2004

This article on Glasgow poet Tom Leonard explores his visual poetry and his poems with existentialist leanings in his fourth poetry collection: access to the silence: poems and posters, 1984–2004. This paper analyses Leonard’s more experimental forms such as his poetry sequences and poster poems, as well as taking a look at his explorations in existentialism. The article aims to widen discussion on Leonard’s work and find similarities in form and content to other poets in the UK. Previous criticism focuses solely on his previous work in urban phonetic dialect, and through discussing how Leonard’s poems use poetic forms to explore philosophical concepts, this article aims to address this imbalance.