The Poets’ Hyem
I am currently completing a practice-led PhD in
Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Funded by an AHRC Northern Bridge
studentship (2015-18), my research project comprises a minority critical
section and a majority creative component. A major new study into modern and
contemporary North-East poetry and regionalism, The Poets’ Hyem will be submitted in early spring 2019.
The critical exegesis uses John Kinsella’s theory of
International Regionalism as a prism through which to reassess four
North-Eastern postwar poets: Basil Bunting, William Martin, James Kirkup and Anne
Stevenson. Arguing that their portrayal of the area situates ‘provincial’
poetry in an international milieu, I trace a literary genealogy from mid-twentieth
century North-East England to the present in order to lay the groundwork for my
own collection: a chorographic exploration of ambivalent belonging which finds geographic, semantic and historic convergence in
South Tyneside.
Challenging one-dimensional and regressive accounts
of regional identity, my collection asks how, in an age of disruption, we can
claim regional affiliation while retaining transnational discourse. The
creative work, which will form the manuscript for my first full-length
collection of poetry, is titled Errata
Slip for a Northern Town.
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