Poetic licence: Issues of signification and authorship in British television verse-documentary, 1986–96

Abstract

This article examines the development of the television verse-documentary form in Britain between 1986 and 1996. Close textual analysis is applied to selected works from this period in order to observe the signifying processes involved when verse commentary is used in documentary and a definition for the generic label ‘versedocumentary’ is proposed. Verse-film juxtaposition in the documentary mode is also seen to have implications for the issue of authorship and how a documentary ‘comes to voice’ through what Trish FitzSimons identifies as the ‘braiding’ process.