Thom Gunn’s poetry and capital

Abstract Thom Gunn grows to fame and popularity with the Movement poets in the 1950s. Coming from a well-educated family with a stake in journalism, Gunn develops a taste for literature from childhood and enhances his cachet at Cambridge. Culture expands into a principal issue in Gunn’s poems manifested in the field of literature and his drawing on canonical English poets like Shakespeare, and practicing the motorcycling subculture. Moreover, Gunn exhibits his cultural competence and artistic distinction through discussing the uncanny workings of canonicity of art in the field of religion. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts like habitus, capital and distinction, this study sheds some light on Gunn’s work and career. The aim is to explicate how Gunn rises to a high status as a poet by accumulating different forms of capital in the field of culture; particularly literature, art, and subculture.