This volume contains the papers of the 'Seventh Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry: Beyond the Canon' (Groningen 2004). During the workshop a first draft of each of the papers was commented on by an international group of specialists in the field of Hellenistic poetry. A number of previous workshops was devoted largely to the major Hellenistic poets. This recent workshop explores what the poets 'beyond the canon' of Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius had to offer and it discussed questions of canonicity in Hellenistic poetry on a more general level. The papers in the present volume deal with a large range of authors and genres: Herondas, Lycophron, Euphorion, Hermesianax, Cercidas, Crates of Thebes and Alexander Aetolus, and the didactic poetry of Aratus, Nicander and Ps.-Scymnus, the later bucolic poems of Moschus and Bion and the pattern poems of Simias. At the same time special attention is given to the hexameter in inscribed Hellenistic epigram, which is compared to that of poets in the environment of the Museum of Alexandria. This volume is part of a series. Every two years a 'Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry' takes place at the University of Groningen, the papers of which are published in 'Hellenistica Groningana'.