Dr Matt Martin

Overview

Biography

I am a researcher, poet, and experimental prose writer. My interests include:

• Literature in English dialects, and in the Patois and Creole languages of the Caribbean.
• Postcolonial and anti-colonial literature.
• Collage writing.
• Visual poetry.

My creative writing publications include Full Spectrum Apotheosis (Contraband Books, 2013), The Dotted Line (Gang Press, 2019), and Frequently Asked Questions (Kater Murr’s Press, 2021), as well as pieces in numerous journals. My visual poetry has featured in exhibitions such as Visual Poetics (Southbank Centre, 2013), Temporary Spaces (Poetry Society, 2020) and Poetry Games (Southbank Centre, 2023).

I have contributed chapters to the collections Hilson Hilson: The Poetry of Jeff Hilson (Crater Press, 2020) and Whose Heritage?: Challenging Race and Identity in Stuart Hall’s Post-nation Britain (Routledge, 2023).

I was employed for many years in London museums, where I focused on the city’s port history, and especially its involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. I now combine my teaching at Birkbeck with work as a freelance editor, honing books of fiction, criticism and philosophy for publication.

Highlights

• 'The Way in which we learn to sing': The heritage of ideas behind ‘Whose Heritage?’ - my chapter in the book Whose Heritage?: Challenging Race and Identity in Stuart Hall’s Post-nation Britain (Routledge, 2023) - is available online through open access.
  

• ‘the linking-up of things’: An Introduction to David Miller’s The Dark Path and There and Here - an introductory essay on the creative-critical writing of David Miller - is in the online journal Creative|Critical (2022).

• My essay ''trying to cross the border. & drowned.': Appropriation and Representation in Jeff Hilson’s 'A Final Poem with Full Stops'' is in Hilson Hilson: The Poetry of Jeff Hilson (Crater Press, 2020).

• Information about the Southbank Centre's 2023 exhibition Poetry Games, which included some of my work, is online here.

Qualifications

• PhD in English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London, 2022
• MA in Creative Writing, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2017
• BA in English, University of York, 1998

Professional memberships

• Writers Forum Workshop (co-organiser), a series of regular meetings for experimental writers to share their work.

• Society for Caribbean Studies.

• Early Career Race Network.

Honours and awards

• Stuart Hall Research Scholarship, Stuart Hall Foundation, April 2017

Research

Research interests

• Literature in English dialects, and in the Patois and Creole languages of the Caribbean.
• Postcolonial and anti-colonial literature.
• Collage writing.
• Visual poetry.

Research overview

My PhD thesis, Tides of Voice: Nation Language as Political Resistance in the Work of Kamau Brathwaite and Bill Griffiths (2022), considers how 'nation language' and dialect has been deployed to advance radical politics in the Caribbean and North East England.

I have recently been researching the Russian-Jewish-American, modernist novelist Isadore Lhevinne, while completing a poetry book and a book-length work of experimental prose.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Steering Committee Member., Contemporary Poetics Research Centre

Supervision and teaching

Teaching

I have taught on a range of Birkbeck's modules at BA and MA levels, covering English and Creative Writing (both poetry and prose).

Teaching modules

• Narrative Methods (AREN005S5)
• Poetry Workshop 1 (AREN041S5)
• Poetry Workshop (AREN120S7)
• Poetry Workshop 2: The Open Page (AREN143S6)