Poetics Research Centre

 

Click for Poetics Research Centre research outputs|

Introduction

The Royal Holloway Poetics Research Centre comprises a number of staff members in the English department with an interest in contemporary poetry and poetics and in the use of text across diverse media: Professor Robert Hampson and Drs Kristen Kreider, Will Montgomery and Redell Olsen. Among the research specialisms of the centre are contemporary writing of the modernist tradition, site-specific writing, performance, sound art, the British Poetry Revival, conceptual poetics and radical lyric. The Poetics Research Centre embraces both theoretical and practice-based work: in parallel with their critical activities, Professor Hampson and Drs Olsen and Kreider are writers, while Dr Montgomery works with sound.

The Poetics Research Centre is integral to the dynamic research culture in poetry and poetics at Royal Holloway. Its members welcome approaches from prospective students interested in Creative Writing and Practice-based PhDs.

Activities

The principal activities of the Poetics Research Centre are:

• Royal Holloway’s MA in Poetic Practice, a unique space for critical and creative activity that encompasses poetry, performance, sound art and writing in an expanded field. All members of the Poetics Research Centre teach on the MA.
• Regular seminars on poetry held in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Kent and at Université Paris-Est.
• Readings, discussions and workshops featuring invited poets.
• POLYply, a cross-genre reading and performance series based at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in Kings Cross.

The RHUL Poetics Research Centre has links with the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre| at Birkbeck, the Centre for Modern Poetry| at the University of Kent, the Centre for Creative Writing| at Southampton, London University’s Centre for Creative Collaboration|, and with similar groups in Paris and the US.

  

Centre Members

Professor Robert Hampson| has had a long-standing involvement in contemporary innovative poetry. He co-edited New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible (1993) and, more recently, Frank O’Hara Now (2010). He is currently co-editing a volume of essays on Allen Fisher and working on a monograph on Poetry and the Politics of Postmodernity. He co-organises the TALKS series of seminars at the Centre for Poetics Studies, Birkbeck College, London, and a seminar on Innovative Poetry at the Institute for English Studies. Stride published his selected poems, Assembled Fugitives, in 2000; his long poem Seaport was recently re-published by Shearsman; and in 2010, Veer published the sequence an explanation of colours.  

Dr. Kristen Kreider| is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since taking this position in 2008, she has sought to promote an interdisciplinary, socially engaged approach to contemporary poetry and poetics, and to encourage a rigorous dialogue between creative and critical practice. Situating her own research in the expanded field of contemporary writing and text-based art practice, Kristen is currently completing a monograph entitled Material Poetics: Sign, Subject, Site.   
As a poet, Kristen collaborates with architect James O’Leary. The work of Kreider + O’Leary engages with the particularities of a given site – be this a physical, architectural location or more abstract locus of creative intent – in order to open up meaning.  The work takes on many forms including performance, installation and time-based media and has been exhibited in the UK as well as internationally in Europe, Australia, Japan and the United States. 
See www.kreider-oleary.net|.

Dr. Will Montgomery| is a critic active in the field of contemporary poetry and poetics. He is the author of The Poetry of Susan Howe: History, Theology, Authority (Palgrave, 2010) and he has recently co-edited (with Robert Hampson) Frank O’Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet (Liverpool UP, 2010). He has published many articles on contemporary poetry. He is one of the organisers of the POLYply| series and a member of the Poetics Research Centre at Royal Holloway. He is currently RCUK Research Fellow in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Before working at Royal Holloway, he taught at Southampton University and at Queen Mary, University of London. He has a long-standing involvement, as critic and practitioner, in contemporary experimental music, field recording and sound art (http://www.selvageflame.com|). He has released three CDs and one recent audio piece, on social housing and modernism in south London, was presented as part of the South Bank’s Ether Festival in 2010.

Dr. Redell Olsen’s| publications include 'Punk Faun' (Subpress, 2012), ‘Book of the Fur’ (Rempress, 2000), ‘Secure Portable Space’ (Reality Street, 2004) and the collaboratively edited ‘Here Are My Instructions’ (Gefn Press, 2004). She is the editor of the online journal How2| which publishes modernist and innovative poetry and poetics by women writers. Recent work is available in ‘Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets’ (Shearsman, 2010) and ‘I’ll Drown My Book: ‘Conceptual Writing by Women” (Les Figues Press, 2011). Her recent projects have involved texts for performance and film and include: ‘Newe Booke of Copies’ (2009) and ‘Bucolic Picnic (or Toile de Jouy Camouflage)’ (2009). ‘The Lost Swimming Pool ‘; a site-specific collaboration was commissioned by the Creative Campus Initiative, June 2010. She has recently published articles on Frank O’Hara, Abigail Child and the relationship between contemporary poetics and the visual arts. She is a member of the RHUL Poetics Research Centre and a co-ordinator of the POLYply| reading series at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, University of London.  

Current Postgraduate Research Students

Click here to see details of our current postgraduate research students in the Poetics Research Centre.|