Poetry and Poetics

This cluster in the Centre for English Literature and Language focuses on poetry and poetics in the sense of critical approaches to poetry, and the making of poetry itself. It is headed up by Professor Antony Rowland. The cluster comprises nine further members (Dr Scott Brewster, Prof Susan Powell, Prof Sharon Ruston, Dr Andrew Cooper, Dr Scott Thurston, Dr Judy Kendall, Dr Carson Bergstrom, Ursula Hurley and Dr Matt Boswell) and has particular strengths in three main periods: the twentieth century, the eighteenth century and the medieval period. It also supports thematic research in innovative poetics, literary Romanticism, contemporary Irish poetry and the Holocaust.

Individual researchers are internationally recognized in their fields. Rowland has recently been described as the ‘leading expert in the Anglophone world in post-Holocaust poetry’. Brewster has an international profile in Irish poetry and Irish studies and is President of the Steering Board of the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS) and a member of the National Council of the British Association for Irish Studies.

Thurston has a developing international profile in innovative poetry and has, by invitation, recorded performances of his work for the ‘Archive of the Now’ collection (Brunel University). Through Thurston’s research on innovation in poetry and Kendall’s work on Edward Thomas, this group also has close links with the Creative Writing research cluster.

Further specialisms include the eighteenth century and Romanticism, through the research of Bergstrom; Medieval poetry, through the research of Powell, member of the Harlaxton Symposium; and Chartist Poetry, through the work of Professor Brian Maidment. Bergstrom is also Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

Key Publications

These include:

• Carson Bergstrom, The Rise of New-Science Epistemological, Linguistic and Ethical Ideals and the Lyric Genre in the Eighteenth Century (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2003).
• Scott Brewster, Lyric (Routledge, 2009).
• Judy Kendall (ed.) Edward Thomas’s Poets (Carcanet, 2008).
• Judy Kendall, Joy Change (Cinammon Books, 2010)
• Antony Rowland, Tony Harrison and the Holocaust (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001).
• Antony Rowland, Holocaust Poetry: Awkward Poetics in the Work of Sylvia Plath, Geoffrey Hill, Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
• Antony Rowland, The Land of Green Ginger (Salt Books, 2008)
• Antony Rowland, Readings from his Poems (CD) (The Poetry Archive, 2010)
• Ruston, Sharon, Shelley and Vitality (Palgrave, 2005)
• Scott Thurston, Internal Rhyme (Shearsman Books, 2010)
• Scott Thurston, Momentum (Shearsman Books, 2008)