The Royal Holloway Poetics Research Centre explores both creative practice and critical approaches to contemporary poetry. Interdisciplinary and international in its scope, the centre’s research focuses on the history and contemporary writing of diverse poetic forms and media, from book arts to digital poetics, visual poetry, performance, visual arts, to sound and performance texts.
Based in the English Department, the Poetics Research Centre is integral to the dynamic research culture in poetry and poetics at Royal Holloway. Through its Members and Associate Members, it is part of a vibrant ecology of poetic making and criticism across the UK and beyond.
Research specialisms include contemporary writing in the modernist tradition, concrete and visual poetry, site-specific writing, book arts, performance, sound art, poetry and film, the British Poetry Revival, poetry and the visual arts, conceptual poetics and radical lyric. The centre is strongly informed by international and transatlantic dialogues on poetry and poetics.
It hosts and supports a range of activities, including one-off events with visiting poets, artists, musicians and critics, as well as extended projects, conferences and seminars on themes such as translation, ecology, sound, feminisms, race. A number of these events are open to the general public.
The Poetics Research Centre provides a valuable forum for dialogue involving postgraduate students and staff and regularly showcases student work, for example, at the annual Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall, London. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the innovative and highly regarded postgraduate Poetic Practice programme at Royal Holloway, now a pathway on the MA in Creative Writing. The Poetic Practice pathway is led by Professor Redell Olsen.
Keep in touch
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To find out more, email poeticsresearchcentre@rhul.ac.uk and check out the centre’s pages below, including our new Poetic Practice Now showcase and archive.
‘The Royal Holloway Poetics Research Centre has a habit of producing engaging, innovative, vital writers, and as such has shown why it is an essential facet of the poetry landscape in the UK’
Aaron Kent, founder of Broken Sleep Books
