Filler Poems: Synecdoche and the Serial Rhythms of Victorian Poetry

Abstract

Filler poems in Victorian periodical print represent perhaps the most read and most denigrated poetry of the era. Conventionally dismissed by critics as short, sentimental, worthless poetry, which filled in spare spaces on the periodical page, filler poetry has recently been reclaimed as in fact valuable poetry that is worthy of reconsideration. But what if this poetry was instead assessed on its own terms, as ephemeral second-rate work published in the many thousands? This chapter considers the importance of filler poems at scale, as a function of serial time, read by Victorians cumulatively, disrupting and de-familiarizing our conventional notions of Victorian poetry as a literary category.

Research for this chapter was possible thanks to generous funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as research conducted in the National Library of Scotland and the University of Victoria’s Special Collections. See Chapman for access to periodical poems discussed in this chapter.