Professor Scott Thurston

School of Arts and Media

Photo of Professor Scott Thurston

Contact Details

Crescent House 200E

Please email for an appointment.

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Current positions

Professor of Poetry and Innovative Creative Practice/Research Lead for the English Language, Literature and Creative Practice Research Group

Biography

I first began writing poetry in the vortex of the London experimental poetry scene in the late 1980s when I regularly attended the Sub-Voicive poetry reading series and Bob Cobbing’s New River Project workshops. Following my first degree in English at UEA, I moved to Poland to teach for a few years. On my return, I studied for a PhD in Poetics under the supervision of Robert Sheppard at Edge Hill. I joined Salford in 1994 to set up our degree in English and Creative Writing and later established our Masters in Creative Writing: Innovation and Experiment and our PhD pathway in Creative Writing.

Areas of research

Contemporary British and North American Innovative Poetry and Poetics, Radical Dance and Movement Practices, Creative Approaches to Therapeutic Practice

Teaching

I teach on the following modules:

Undergraduate

  • Creative Practice 
  • Working the Text 
  • Introduction to Poetry 
  • Writing Poetry in the Twenty-first Century 
  • New Departures: Reading and Writing Innovative Poetry
  • Final Portfolio

Postgraduate

  • Experimental Practice
  • Creative Project
  • Theory, Text, Writing
  • Professional Practice

I also currently supervise critical and creative PhD level research on contemporary poetry and poetics.

Research Interests

I am passionate about poetry that dares to do different. I co-organised The Other Room – a reading series promoting experimental writing in Manchester for ten years and I co-founded and co-edit the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry (since 2009) – the first and only journal of its kind in the UK.

Since 2004, I have been developing a poetics integrating dance and poetry which has involved me studying with dancers in Berlin and New York and collaborating with three dancers in the UK. I worked with Sarie Mairs Slee on the Vital Signs project, with Julia Griffin on Dancing the Blues and currently collaborate with Gemma Collard-Stokes.

Since 2014, I have been collaborating with therapists on research into new creative therapies which has led to the Arts for the Blues project.

Qualifications and Memberships

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) English Literature with Minor in Linguistics, University of East Anglia
  • Ph.D. Rescale: Method and Technique in Contemporary British Linguistically Innovative Poetry and Poetics, University of Lancaster (awarding institution)

Memberships

  • Member of the National Association of Writers in Education