This volume explores the relationship between the poetry of the mainstream and kinds of modernist poetry that have had to make their way outside it. Mainstream poets like Paul Muldoon, James Fenton and Carol Ann Duffy multiply voices and so draw on resources from the novel – Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic is therefore used to explain their techniques.

Dialogic Readers: Children Talking and Thinking Together about Visual Texts celebrates the sophisticated and dynamic discussions that primary-aged children can have as they talk together to make meaning from a variety of texts, and it highlights the potential for talk between readers as a tool for critical and creative thinking. It proposes a new dialogic theory of reading comprehension which incorporates multi-modal media , and adds further weight to the argument that talk as a tool for learning should form a central part of primary classroom learning and teaching.