Responsibilities

Teaching Areas: American literature; poetry and poetics.

Convenor of American Poetics, American Spaces, Reading Poetry (MA Creative Writing)

Tutor on: Approaches to Poetry, American Spaces, American Writing: 19th Century to Modernism, Contemporary American Writing, Researching Contemporary Cultures (MA English Studies)

Office Hours: Tuesdays 10-2pm.

Background

Qualifications:

BA (Hons) English (Goldsmiths, University of London, 1999); MA Contemporary Approaches to English Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London, 2002); PhD in experimental writing and philosophy (Goldsmiths, University of London, 2005).

I joined MMU in 2007, having previously taught at Goldsmiths (2003-2006) and Royal Holloway (2006-7).

Research Interests:

My main area of research explores different forms of writing which combine critical and creative practice. Much of my own practice in this area stems from scholarly research into modern and contemporary poetry and poetics; experimental writing in theory and practice; literature and philosophy (especially Blanchot, Derrida, and Levinas; literature and the visual arts; Samuel Beckett; 20th century American literature.

I am currently working on a number of different projects, at various stages of completion:

1. The Selected Poems of Rosmarie Waldrop (as editor): currently in consultation with New Directions on this project
2. A Boat to Float on the Flood: a critical-creative book which explores notions of mourning in literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, religion, and visual art, and which blends poetry, prose, essay, quotation, and collage.
3. The Culture of Poetry, a book-length project exploring the cultural place and function of contemporary avant-garde poetry (currently under review with Manchester University Press)
4. 'Kenneth Goldsmith and the Art of Boredom': a scholarly article exploring Kenneth Goldsmith's notion of conceptual poetry in relation to philosophies of boredom (currently under revision for the Journal of American Studies)
5. 'Literature and Refusal': a scholarly article which blends essay and collage to explore the relationship between notions of avant-garde literature and the politics of refusal. 
6. Two chapters on Deconstruction and Postmodern Aesthetics for Companion to Critical Theory (Edinburgh University Press).

Areas of Supervision:

I am particularly interested in supervising research projects which combine critical with creative practice. I have supervised, or am supervising projects on: Don Delillo and the visual arts; Anglo-American experimental poetics; David Foster Wallace; T.S. Eliot, Modernism, and Ecocriticsm; Irish-American drama; James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and illustration. 

Publications

Books

Relative Strangeness: Reading Rosmarie Waldrop (Exeter: Shearsman, 2013).

The Little Shed of Various Lamps (London: Very Small Kitchen, May 2013).
[Previously published as a chapbook by Red Ceilings Press, 2011]
Review by Anthony Caleshu in New Walk, Issue 5 (Autumn/Winter 2012), p.56


Critical Essays:

'Relative Strangeness: Reading Rosmarie Waldrop,' New Walk, Issue 6 (Spring 2013), pp.18-24.

'Samuel Beckett: Physics and Poetics,' The Literateur (November 2012), http://literateur.com/samuel-beckett-physics-and-poetics/

'Rosmarie Waldrop and Theories of Translation,' , 452ºF: Journal of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, Vol. 7 (July 2012) pp.24-39.

'American Inheritance: Steve Erickson and the Pursuit of Happiness,' European Journal of American Culture, Vol. 31, No. 1 (April 2012), pp.41-54.

‘Among Other Things or, Sculpture Beyond Identity’, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Vol. 43, No. 2 (June 2010), pp.1-18.

‘Without Location: Rosmarie Waldrop and the Poetics of the Neuter’ in Kornelia Freitag (ed.), Another Language - Contemporary US-American Poetic Experiment in a Changing World (Munster, Lit-Verlag, 2010), pp.251-262.

‘The Poetics of Emergency’ Jacket, 32 (2007).

'In Other Words: Writing Maurice Blanchot Writing’, Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique Vol.10 (2005), pp. 269-281.

 

Poetry

'Memory of Tomorrow' and 'All Then Away,' Shadowtrain 40 (April 2013).

'A Boat to Float on the Flood' (sequence), Turbulence 12 (December 2012), pp. 16-18.

'Within a Budding Grove,' 'Peripheral Vision,' and 'If Any Oarsman Should Hear My Voice,' Shearsman 91 (April 2012), pp.58-60.

'In Hiding' (sequence), Shadowtrain 38 (March-April 2012): http://www.shadowtrain.com/id442.html  

'Army Fatigues' (sequence), E.Ratio 15 (February, 2012): http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue15_Duffy.html

'Plainchant (Voyages)', Ink Sweat & Tears (January, 2012): http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2012/1/28/4987345.html

Series of poems at Stride Magazine (January, 2012): http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag%202012/Jan%202012/SATELLITE%20OF%20LOVE.htm

'Indefinite Articles' (sequence), Blackbox Manifold #7 (October 2011): 
http://www.manifold.group.shef.ac.uk/issue7/NikolaiDuffy7.html

Series of poems at Stride Magazine (August 2011): 
http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2011/august%202011/nikolai%20duffy.htm

Series of poems at The Red Ceilings (September 2011): 
http://redceilings.blogspot.com/search/label/nikolai%20duffy and http://redceilings.blogspot.com/2011/09/work-nikolai-duffy.html

 

Reviews

'The Louisiana Purchase by Jim Goar,' The Literateur (June 2013).

'Collected Poems by Ed Dorn,' The Literateur (June 2013).

'Exodus by Lars Iyer,' The Literateur (May 2013).

'Dear World & Everyone In It,' ed. Nathan Hamilton, Stride (April 2013).

'Rainstorm with Goldfish by Martin Edwards,' Sphinx 22 (April 2013).

'Tiny Disturbances by Wynn Weldon,' Sphinx 22 (April 2013).

'All Just by David Herd,' The Literateur (November 2012): http://literateur.com/all-just-by-david-herd/

'Review of Jesse Glass Two,' Sphinx 21 (September 2012): http://www.sphinxreview.co.uk/pamphlet-reviews/2012/63-sphinx-21-2012/530-threadbare-fablesian-seed

'Review of Ahren Warner's Re:,' Sphinx 20 (June 2012): http://www.sphinxreview.co.uk/pamphlet-reviews/2012/61-sphinx-20-2012/522-re-ahren-warner-

'A Silent Occupation: Chrstien Gholson's On the Side of the Crow, The Literateur (February, 2012): http://literateur.com/a-silent-occupation-christien-gholsons-on-the-side-of-a-crow/

'Orientated by Manuals,' Stride Magazine (January, 2012):  http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag%202012/Jan%202012/all%20the%20rooms.duffy.htm

Review of Tony Williams's All the Room's of Uncle's Head, Sphinx 19 (2011), http://www.sphinxreview.co.uk/pamphlet-reviews/sphinx-19/492-all-the-rooms-in-uncles-head-tony-williams 

'Missing Things,' Stride Magazine (September 2011): 
http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2011/Sept%202011/Missing%20Things.htm

Review C. J. Ackerley and S.E. Gontarski, The Grove Companionto Samuel Beckett: A Reader’s Guide to His Works,Life, and Thought, The Beckett Circle/Le Circle de Beckett, 29:1 (Spring 2006), pp.20-21.

 

Presentations

'Somewhere in the Atlantic: Rosmarie Waldrop and the Poetics of the Between,' BAAS 2013, Exeter University, 18-21 April 2013.

'The Poetics of Collage: On Rosmarie Waldrop,' Contemporary Poetry and Source, Plymouth University, 18-20 May 2012.

'Extending the Document: Craig Santos Perez’s from unincorporated territory,' American Alternatives/Alternative Americas, University College Cork 27-28 April 2012.

'An Alternate Way of Doing Things: Burning Deck and Small Press Publishing,' Writing and the Small Press, University of Salford, 31 March 2012.

 ‘Samuel Beckett: Physics, Poetics and Late Modernism,’ Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive, York University, 22-26 June 2011.

‘It doesn’t take long to count a handful of coins: Notes on the Economics of Poetry,’ Department of English Research Seminars, Huddersfield University, 23 March, 2011.

‘American Revolutions or the Politics of Crowds’, BAAS, Edinburgh University, 27-30 March 2008.

‘States of Damage and States of Exception’, ’States of Damage’, Warwick University, 8 March 2008.

‘Reading the Unreadable: On Kenneth Goldsmith’, ‘TALKS’, Contemporary Poetics Research Centre, Birkbeck, 22 November 2006.

‘On Being Ghostly: Michael Palmer and the Poetics of the Ghostly’, American Studies Research Seminar Series, Sussex University, 7 November 2006.

‘The Anonymous Company of Samuel Beckett,’ Beckett and Company, Tate Modern, London Consortium, Birkbeck, Goldsmiths, 6-8 October 2006.

‘Poetics of Emergency or, The Aesthetics and Politics of Experimentation’, Pressure to Experiment, University of Southampton, 28-29 September 2006.

‘Nothing to Say and Saying It: Rosmarie Waldrop and 9/11’, American Prohibitions, Irish Association of American Studies, 31 March-1 April 2006.

‘A.N. Other Language: Rosmarie Waldrop and the Matter of the Page,’ ‘TALKS’, Contemporary Poetics Research Centre, Birkbeck, 1 March 2006.

‘Circumlocutions of the Neuter: Fragmentation and Gender in Rosmarie Waldrop’, Another Language: Contemporary US-American Poetic Experiment in a Changing World, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, 7-9 July 2005.

‘The Curious Goings-On of the Night: Writing Maurice Blanchot Writing’, Blanchot, The Obscure, Monash University, 19-20 August 2004.

‘The Memory of Tomorrow: Derrida and the Invention of Democracy’, Encounters with Derrida, University of Sussex, 22-23 September 2003.