Dr. Judy Kendall

Current positions

Reader in English and Creative Writing

BIOGRAPHY

I am a Reader in English and Creative Writing at Salford. I have an MA in English from Cambridge university and in Creative Writing from Lancaster university. My PhD was on the process of poetic composition with special reference to Edward Thomas, I moved to University of Salford in 2006 to help develop the new BA in English and Creative Writing and went on to become Programme leader of the BA in 2008. I have acted as Research Lead for the English and Creative Writing Group and now lead on the MA in Creative Writing: Innovation and Experiment. 

I specialise in visual text, collaborative translation, poetry and poetry composition as both academic and creative practitioner. I also have a background as a playwright and short story writer and have won awards in both these areas. I have published four volumes of poetry, with two of my poems featuring on the EDEXCEL A level and AS syllabus. I have also published two research monographs on the process of poetic composition, two edited volumes of poets' letters, and many articles on the subjects of poetic composition, translation and visual text, and have won a number of awards for both my creative and academic work, including featuring twice in Guardian round ups of best books of the year. I guest-edited the European Journal of English Studies special Visual Text issue, together with my colleague Glyn White.  I also have a strong interest in Japanese aesthetics, developed during my seven years lecturing in Japan, and am now the essays, reviews and bilingual haiku editor of the main UK independent haiku journal Presence. I am also active in collaborative translations of poetry from a number of languages, including Russian, Romanian, Hungarian and Japanese. I was appointed the incredible edible Todmorden poet laureate for several years, during which time I developed the new concept of vegetable haiku. I am currently translating riddles from Old English into modern English and working on an Edinburgh University Press monograph on the thickness of language in translation composition and process , with a future volume planned on the creation and teaching of visual text effects. 

Recent doctorate students include Dr Sean Gregory, whose creative literary biography of Anthony Burgess ‘Dismember the Past’ went on to be published as Three Graves with Bluemoose Books in 2021, and Dr Vashti Gbolagun whose thesis on environmental degradation in the Jos Plateau in Nigeria was entitled ‘Tin Mining degradation: autobiographical investigations of home, loss and identity’.

Areas of research

Visual text, Cultural translation, Haiku, Old English translation, Avant-garde translation, Creative Process, Creative Practice Research