Kingston University 2014 to present
Lecturer in creative writing and English literature - I've been at Kingston University since late 2014. The institution has supported my development as a teacher and lecturer, and I’ve been able to develop a kind of pedagogy which is supported in literature quite rarely - one that emphasises method, that balances context with content. I have been teaching primarily modern, avant-garde, innovative techniques of poetry and writing in general, alongside explorations into psychoanalysis and literature, and 19th and 20th century novelists like Doystoevsky, Pessoa, Hamsun. Mainly I'm working with remarkably enthusiastic students, and developing a small tradition around my module - Experiments and Innovations.
Kingston have also been very supportive in my efforts to connect students to the world of writing and poetry beyond the university, and often I have organised exhibitions and events where students have been involved alongside professional practitioners and vitally, not identified as students, but writers early in their journey. I was appointed the director of www.writerscentrekingston.com in 2017.
My work with the students outside of the classroom is best found on the Writers Centre Kingston website, including my editing of the Sampson Low Pamphlet scheme - which aims to publish debut poetry chapbooks by Kingston students https://www.writerscentrekingston.com/sampsonlow and my curating The University Camarade for five years. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/unicamarade
A note on : my special course at Kingston University
February 26, 2020
In January 2015 I took over a module on ‘modern’ poetry at Kingston University, when I began teaching there. Now, in February 2020, I’m working with my sixth set of students. The course is without doubt my biggest pedagogical achievement. It’s really honed and specialised, and I change it every year, allow huge room for improvisation. I base it around methods fundamentally. Ways of writing contemporary poetry, tools. I’ll teach constraint writing and do case studies on oulipo. Ideas around conscious / unconscious writing with surrealism. Sound, visual, concrete, performance, video, electronic, kinetic, sculptural poetry etc… Then I try to respond to those who are in the room, lucky as I am to be able to control the numbers and have a dozen or under people involved. I try to open spaces for them to find their own subjects, for the methods to just reveal what is most original and idiosyncratic about their interests and personalities. Then I’m very wary of theory, and talk concepts and ideas and philosophy only when it seems to support the methods / subjects people are naturally bringing. So every year of the six has been so different, but I am proper proud of some of the amazing poets who have come from the course. This picture here shows us doing asemic / pansemic writing techniques in lesson.
Reading translations of my student, Helena Artus', BSL poems
February 24, 2019
The Sampson Low Writers’ Centre Kingston publication series has been a really joyous project. It essentially involves a collaboration between the literary centre i run at Kingston Uni and local publisher Alban Low, with an open call to students and alumni of the Uni, to publish debut or rarefied chapbooks of pretty innovative poetry. All 9 of the poets have been quite brilliant so far, and this year’s cohort is no different. Julia Rose Lewis, Helena Artus and Marcia Knight Latter are all gifted writers. This past week, at the opening of the Museum of Futures exhibition we had a second launch of their works, and I had the pleasure of reading the English translations of Helena’s poems, which are written entirely in British Sign Language. Her pamphlet is essentially hands, signing letters, forming poems. This is undoubtedly the bestest part of sharing ideas at a Uni, for work, meeting and working with writers like this. (Buy the publications here https://sampsonlow.co/wck-pamphlets/