Modern Poetry

The Centre for Modern Poetry is the hub of practice and research for students and staff working in modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. It brings together world-leading scholars, acclaimed poets and postgraduate students, sharing research and hosting internationally renowned events throughout the year to create a rich environment for the study, discussion, circulation and creation of poetry.

Doctoral Study
The Centre supervises and has supervised dozens of PhD students, and a number of the Centre’s recent PhD graduates have obtained academic posts in leading universities. We specialize in experimental, radical poetries from the UK and North America: recent theses have worked on the New York School, ecopoetics, the New American Poetry, hypertext, female elegy, performance in British poetry, the American long poem and women’s L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. The Centre’s staff research areas including the lives and afterlives of the avant-garde, on poetry and the State of Exception, on phenomenology and modernism, as well as numerous practice-based projects. We welcome proposals on similar areas and beyond: for information on how to apply for a PhD click here or email the Centre’s director at b.hickman@kent.ac.uk.

Master’s
The Centre provides a year-long strand of the School of English MA in English and American Literature consisting of: EN871: Men and Women: Modernist Poetry and EN872: Provocations and Invitations: Poetry After the Second World War.

Funding Opportunities
The Centre is also affiliated to the CHASE consortium, which funds postgraduate work through the AHRC. For information on CHASE, and other forms of postgraduate funding which are available, click here.