Research

We encourage PhD applications across a wide range of concerns with poetry and poetic practice, and in particular aim to develop the field of contemporary innovative poetries. If you are thinking of working in this area, you are welcome to contact us. Postgraduates are located in the 5* School of English and Humanities, where there is a strong research ethos. Doctoral students here number around a hundred. Practice-led work is welcomed: students may obtain a PhD through submission of a portfolio of creative work accompanied by a critical commentary. Interdisciplinary work is welcomed, and often where required joint supervisions will be arranged across Schools, including staff working in Visual Media, for example, or in the School of Languages. We are close to the British Library, and to other archives such as the University College Small Press and Little Magazines collection.

Staff supervising doctorates in the field of twentieth-century and contemporary poetry include Rebecca Beasley, Esther Leslie, William Rowe and Carol Watts. There are also opportunities in the School to study poetry from earlier periods.

Current doctoral topics include: Sensation in contemporary British poetry; Modernist small poetry magazines; Temporality in contemporary poetry (Stan Brakhage, Bruce Andrews, Joan Retallack, Lee Harwood);  Harry Matthews's theory and practice of translation; Concepts and practices of rhythm in Henri Meschonic, Caroline Bergvall, Brian Catling and chris cheek; The Poetry of Jeremy Prynne; The notion of poetry as action in Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and Lee Harwood; Brazilian Concrete Poetry and the work of Jorge Eielson; Chilean poetry of the 1990s.