Degrees

BA English (Cambridge); MPhil English (Cambridge); PhD English (Cambridge)

Research interests

I am interested in the history, practice and fate of practical criticism, particularly in relation to lyric poetry. My PhD thesis looked at the role of example in lyric studies, and sought to argue for a critical spirit of reading which attends to individual poems without an ultimate appeal to a general conception or the pursuit of historical and cultural knowledge.

I have particular interests in T. S. Eliot, William Empson and Veronica Forrest-Thomson; medieval lyric and mysticism; George Mackay Brown; ancient Greek tragedy and epitaph; and the Japanese novel and short story.

Teaching interests

The majority of my teaching has been in three papers: the Part I modern paper; the Part II lyric paper; and practical criticism. Most recently, I have supervised dissertations on Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce’s Ulysses next to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I welcome contact from any potential dissertation students who might want to work with me.

Publications

‘Medieval Lyric: Another Direction’, Critical Quarterly, 62.4 (2020), 87-109. 

'Beyond Theory of the Lyric', Critical Quarterly, 64.3 (2022), 80-106.

Trinity Poets, ed. Adrian Poole and Angela Leighton, with Joe Moshenska, Chris Scott, Anne Toner and Ross Wilson (Carcanet, 2017)

Other interests

Walking and birdwatching; Zen; cooking; football.