Poetry Research Network

Coordinator: Dr Ruth J Owen

The Poetry Research Network at Cardiff University focuses on modern and contemporary poetry from throughout the cultures of the world. Its aim is to reach a fuller understanding of the forms of poetic practice.

In developing critical tools appropriate to the genre, the network represents a site where practice meets theoretical thinking.

Drawing on Cardiff expertise, we are reaching out to national and international poets through a series of workshops. Poets of differing outlooks are invited to present their work and to participate in our poetry translation workshops.

We are bringing international poetry scholars to Wales, in order that researchers and students come into contact with the latest poetry and the latest approaches to long-standing poetry.

The Poetry Research Network particularly welcomes researchers from abroad and those working in languages other than English, as well as specialists in the translation of poetry and in the interactions between poetry and music, poetry and visual art, and poetry and theatre.

Poetry has always found itself in touch with its outside – with other languages, with other semiotic systems, including the visual arts, performing arts and music, as well as politics and history. These are particular areas for the development of our research and our research-led events.

Current activities

• Theme for 2011-12: Hamlet and Poetry
  The network’s inaugural event was the Cardiff conference Hamlet and Poetry.


• Theme for 2012-13: Poetry under Pressure
  We are inviting poets to Cardiff to participate in readings, public talks and workshops. The theme of poetry under pressure will be variously interpreted – as pressure from a government cultural policy or pressure from a dominant discourse, for example – and provide the framework for a series of encounters between poets, researchers and the public. The first 'Poetry under Pressure' events in May 2012 will involve our two German poets-in-residence Uwe Kolbe and Richard Pietraß.


• Theme for 2013-14: Dylan Thomas
  2014 is the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth and as such an opportunity to re-assess the significance of his work. The Poetry Research Network is planning a series of events particularly focussing on the cultural mobility of Dylan Thomas’s poetry and its impact beyond the UK in languages other than English. These events will include the conference panel “Inventing the German Dylan Thomas”.

Join the network

Researchers of poetry and poetics are invited to join the network, as are students embarked on doctoral projects focussing on poetry. To join, please register your name, email and university affiliation here. Established poets, with at least one book publication in any world language, are warmly invited to join the network.

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