Poetry: Poeisis, Process and Pedagogy
Submitting Institution
University of GloucestershireUnit of Assessment
English Language and LiteratureSummary Impact Type
CulturalResearch Subject Area(s)
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies
Summary of the impact
The impact of Professor Nigel McLoughlin's work has two main,
interrelated facets. The first is the public dissemination of his poetry
through a variety of media, including mass media. His work takes the Irish
troubles as a main context, and addresses themes of violence, invasion,
identity, belonging, and tradition. He has published widely and has been
invited to perform his work to public audiences at numerous literary
festivals. The second is his academic research into pedagogy and poetics.
Here his academic work examines the creative process and principles of
making poems and his research reflects how one can explore and teach the
various textual, musical, rhythmic, formal and thematic considerations of
poetry. His own poetry bears out this reflective relation to expressivity
through its perpetual experiments with formal and musical considerations,
imagery and the relationship of the poetic whole to multi-sensory images
and embodied thought.
Underpinning research
McLoughlin's practice-led research into poetry began initially in
1993. By 2005, when he joined the University of Gloucestershire to take up
the post of Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, he was already an
established poet with a significant profile which demonstrated cultural
impact through invited public readings interviews and favourable reviews.
Shortly after joining the university his third collection, Blood,
was published. The collection was thematically centred on historical and
mythological explorations of invasion, and his fourth collection, Dissonances,
returned to reinvestigate tradition, musical and rhythmic devices and to
experiment with formal constraints. His most recent collection, Chora:
New & Selected Poems, was a significant, thematically
consistent, body of work, which integrated a representative sample of
previous work, many of which were significantly revised, with a selection
of new work. His practice-led research in poetry since taking up his post
in Gloucestershire has continued to generate cultural impact as evidenced
below.
His published output of poems in literary journals since 1993 runs to
over two hundred publication credits. Since taking up his current post,
his work has appeared in many of the major literary journals in the UK and
Ireland, many of which have international reputations and circulations,
such as Poetry Review, London Magazine, Agenda, Acumen, Poetry
Ireland, Cyphers, The Shop and Resurgence. His work has also
appeared in international journals such as Free Verse (USA); and American,
British & Canadian Studies (Romania), and has been broadcast on
Weekend Edition (National Public Radio, USA).
In addition to his creative work, McLoughlin has given many
conference papers and published scholarly articles on the pedagogy of
creative writing and on the nature of creativity and its relation to
poetics, as well as on poetics more generally. Since joining the
university, he has given over twenty invited conference papers, including
conferences with international reach and significance such as The Line
of Contemporary Poetry, Oxford University (2006); National
Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) (2006-9); Associated Writing
Programmes (AWP) conferences in Chicago (2009), Washington (2011) and
Boston (2013), The Poetics And Linguistics Association (PALA) Annual
International Conference in the University of Heidelberg (2013); and Great
Writing (2006-2012), including a joint keynote address to Great Writing,
Imperial College (2012).
A significant proportion of the audiences at NAWE, Great Writing and AWP
include arts practitioners who work outside the academy, and a number of
those who teach creative writing in the community, in schools, or in other
non-university settings. He has published papers on pedagogy in Word
Play, the magazine of the English Subject Centre; Writing in
Education, the journal of the National Association of Writers in
Education, and in New Writing: The international journal for the
practice and theory of creative writing.
During this time McLoughlin has also published articles on
poetics and stylistics in New Writing: The international journal for
the practice and theory of creative writing. He has published on the
creative process in Axon: Creative Explorations, as well as
several book chapters on writing as a creative process. In 2012, he was
invited to co-edit a special edition of the Australian Journal TEXT:
The journal of writing and writing courses which focused on
Creativity: Cognitive, Social and Cultural Perspectives. In 2013, he was
invited to edit a special edition of the journal American, British and
Canadian Studies entitled Creative Writing: New Signals, New
Departures. These invitations evidence of the reach of his academic and
creative work within the wider international community and evidence the
esteem in which it is held.
References to the research
McLoughlin, N. (2005). Blood, Bristol: Bluechrome Press.
McLoughlin, N. (2007). Dissonances, (Bristol: Bluechrome.
McLoughlin, N. (2009). Chora: New & Selected Poems, Matlock:
Templar Poetry.
McLoughlin, N. (2012). `The Workshop as a Creative, Critical and
Intellectual Space'. in P. Perry (ed.) Beyond the Workshop,
London: Kingston University Press
McLoughlin, N. (2010). `Stress Weight: Unwilled Order, Clothes Lines and
Crowned Teeth' in New Writing: The International Journal for the
Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, Vol. 7, No.3, Colchester:
Taylor & Francis. ISSN 1479-0726
McLoughlin, N. (2013). `Writing Poetry' in G. Harper (ed.) The
Blackwell Companion to Creative Writing, London: Wiley Blackwell.
The first two of these were part of a successful RAE submission in 2008;
three of the others are part of the unit's submission to REF 2014. The
positive reviews and comments on the quality of poetry detailed below
refer to Dissonances and Chora. Chora was selected to
feature in the Poetry Book Society Bulletin on publication.
Blood also received very favourable critical notice on publication.
His 2010 article on `Stress Weight' was selected to represent the quality
and breadth of work published in New Writing for its tenth
anniversary celebrations.
Details of the impact
McLoughlin's various works have been disseminated through books,
anthologies, articles, radio broadcasts, conference papers and public
performances, leading to an enhanced public awareness of the thematic
issues that his work addresses, through the public dissemination of the
work, but also through written and verbal interviews about his work, and
through informal discussions with audience members at performances. These
all promote a wider cultural awareness of the formal and thematic concerns
being explored in contemporary Northern Irish poetry more generally.
The distinctively aural appeal of McLoughlin's work is evidenced
through invitations to perform his work at both prestigious and
lesser-known literary festivals and venues. The smaller occasions
nonetheless attract a strong public presence and offer special benefits
and opportunities for audience engagement with new and challenging poetry.
He has been regularly invited to read to audiences at some of the largest
and most important poetry festivals in the UK and Ireland. In the assessed
period he has read at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and Bristol Poetry
Festival among several others. Audience sizes for his readings at smaller
events are usually about fifty, but at larger festivals his readings can
attract audiences in excess of one hundred. McLoughlin's work
impacts on its audience in an immediate and visceral way, which may be
exemplified by the following quotations from the Crafty Green Poet
blog (source 1): `I discovered Nigel
McLoughlin's poetry at a recent
event, where he was reading. I was impressed by the cadences of his
language and the obvious inspiration he finds in the natural world. He
also has a very engaging reading style'. Another reader replied: `Thank
you for this tip-off. I thought McLoughlin's vocabulary was `crisp' and
most evocative'. Because of the thematic issues dealt with in his work, he
has been invited to discuss the Northern Irish troubles and their effect
on the poetry of the 1960s and 1970s generation of new poets and to read
his work. His 2008 Weekend Edition interview on United States
National Public Radio followed that of Senator George Mitchell and had an
audience estimated at 26 million (see audience figures quoted in source
2).
McLoughlin has discussed the importance of musical qualities of
poetry to its reception and composition in interviews and conference
papers as well as in published articles and book chapters. The
performances exemplify this, and he was invited by Sir Andrew Motion and
Richard Carrington, directors of the Poetry Archive, to record an
hour-long reading. The invitation is extended to `significant poets who
write in English' (invitation letter from Poetry Archive available for
inspection). The Poetry Archive website currently receives 200,000 hits
per month. The recording session was completed in December 2012 and the
recording is due to be made publicly available late in 2013. McLoughlin's
work has elicited favourable public reaction both in performance: `at the
Derwent Poetry Festival...there was an audience of eighty-five for the
main Saturday evening reading, and [McLoughlin's] evocative live reading
was exceptionally well received' (private communication, can be
corroborated by Derwent Poetry Festival Director); and with regard to his
printed work, as exemplified by the following quotations from public
comments found on the poetry blog When the Dogs Bite (source 3)
which featured a review of Dissonances: `I've read the book and it
really is wonderful. But if you ever get to listen to him read his
work....it's a real treat' and `It's the best modern poetry I've read';
and from a public comment on Peony Moon (source 4) which featured
a selection of his poems: `I especially like Chorus. `The open-throated
song of morning' is gorgeous'. In Issue 6 of The Shit Creek Review
(source 5) his poem `Snapshot', was praised by one of the editors for `its
triumph over the villanelle form...I've never read anything like it
before. I liked it before I realized it was a villanelle. When does that
ever happen?'
The critical reception of McLoughlin's poetry has been extremely
positive. Since his first collection appeared in 2001, each of his books
has received very favourable critical notice. A review of Dissonances
in Eyewear (source 6), commended his work for its `power and
dynamism', while in The Chimera (source 7), Dr Maggie Butt said of
the same collection: `this book caught me off-guard and quickly became one
of my favourite collections of the year' and `these poems have a real
music built into their bones, and are fleshed with sharp imagery, the sort
that makes you say "yes, that's how it is"...they form a tangible, sensory
connection between the poet and the world — a physicality which he appears
to transmit effortlessly to the reader'. Dr Jan Fortune-Wood, writing in Envoi
Issue 151 (page 91) said his was `work not only of bravery and complexity,
but also deep humanity. It is not always easy listening, but it is a
tremendous song' (source 8). Critics of Chora: New and Selected Poems
have been similarly positive: in Ink, Sweat and Tears (source 9),
Ken Head states that `throughout the more than one hundred poems in the
collection and across a wider range of subjects than I've been able to
find space for...it is the directness of the poet's gaze that is so
noteworthy'. In The Chimera (source 10), Barbara Smith commented
that the collection demonstrates the `expansion of a muscular aural and
oral talent'. Chora was also one of the collections selected to be
featured by the Poetry Book Society in their Bulletin in 2009.
McLoughlin's academic work has also had significant impact, as
evidenced by the fact that his article `Stress Weight: Unwilled Order,
Clothes Lines and Crowned Teeth' was one of seventeen articles chosen to
represent the quality and breadth of the research published as part of the
tenth anniversary celebrations of the Taylor and Francis journal New
Writing: The international journal for the practice and theory of
creative writing. This journal has a significant readership in
territories where creative writing has not yet entered the academy, and
among practising writers outside the academy internationally. The
assessors noted that: they felt it was `innovative' in `[i]ts combination
of critical investigation and practice-led intention' and that `the
author's focus on poetry research from the point of view of a practice-led
philosophy was considered notable' (the quotations are taken from an email
from the editor of New Writing which is available for inspection).
Colleagues nationally and internationally have found McLoughlin's
work on creative writing pedagogy, and the practice and poetics of
creativity to be very influential in thinking about how the discipline is
taught and how courses are designed (contact details of two colleagues who
can corroborate this are supplied).
McLoughlin's practice-led research in poetry has also had impact
in an area into which it is more non-traditional for contemporary poetry
to cross: Hungry Bentley, a band from the north of England, used McLoughlin's
poem `Book of Invasions' as lyrics to a song of the same name on their
album, Closing Credits, which was released in 2008. A review of
the album on Inner Ear Media (source 11) said of `Book of
Invasions': `The words are magnificent'. The band have also used McLoughlin's
version of the Gaelic `Song of Amergin' as lyrics to a song of the same
name on their most recent album, Novel Grade Events, released at
the end of 2012. Both these poems are from McLoughlin's collection
Blood. This has brought McLoughlin's work to the attention
of a wider audience, through performances by the band at around thirty
venues in the UK and elsewhere, with average audiences of around fifty
people, many of whom are not habitual readers of poetry, the songs also
received airplay on independent music stations in the US and Ireland,
again broadening the reach of the poems to music fans, many of whom would
not otherwise engage with poetry. The songs containing McLoughlin's
lyrics are available on iTunes and Spotify; to date there have been over
500 album sales and downloads for Novel Grade Events (data can be
corroborated by Hungry Bentley).
Sources to corroborate the impact
-
Crafty Green Poet Blog (April 2009):
http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/poetry-of-nigel-mcloughlin.
-
NPR data on weekly audience (approx. 26 million):
http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/audience.html
-
When the Dogs Bite review of Dissonances and discussion
(September 2008)
http://whenthedogsbite.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/nigel-mcloughlins-dissonances.html
-
Comments on featured poems at Peony Moon (Sept 2010):
http://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/nigel-mcloughlins-chora/
-
Praise in Editorial of Issue 6 of Shit Creek Review (February
2008):
http://www.shitcreekreview.com/issue6/editorial.htm
http://shitcreek.auszine.com/
(for issue release date)
-
Michael Begnal's Review of Dissonances in Eyewear (February 2008):
http://toddswift.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/guest-review-begnal-on-mcloughlin.html
-
Maggie Butt's Review of Dissonances in The Chimera (May 2008):
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Bj3tfADLUpUJ:the-chimera.com/May2008/Reviews/Butt.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
- Fortune-Wood, J. (2008). `Paying Attention to Things'. Envoi 151:
89-94.
- Ken Head's Review of Chora: New & Selected Poems in Ink,
Sweat and Tears (03/11/10): http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=871
-
Barbara Smith's Review of Chora: New & Selected Poems in
The Chimera (March 2010): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PJ44oQz0L-YJ:www.the-chimera.com/March2010/Reviews/Smith.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
-
Inner Ear Media's Review of adaptation of poem for lyrics on Music
CDs (23/10/08):
http://www.lastfm.fr/user/innerearmedia/journal/2008/10/23/28jm4q_review%3A_hungry_bentley_-_closing_credits?setlang=fr
A portfolio of written communication referred to in the impact case
study, and PDF versions of the material referenced in the links above
are available for inspection. Details of corroborating contacts are also
provided.