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Dr Stephen Willey

Positions held:
  • Lecturer, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I'm a poet, researcher and critic, and聽have founded聽several London based poetry readings: Openned, Benefits and Watadd.聽I am聽committed to the development of dynamic poetry communities both in the UK and internationally.

    I聽specialise in American and British literature from the 20th and 21st centuries, with a focus on experimental and Late Modernist poetry from 1945. My monograph-in-progress, Sounding the Room of British Poetry: Internationalising Community in the School of Bob Cobbing, is a literary history of the international poetic and avant-garde from 1945 to the present day, as seen through the institutional commitments that defined the careers of a range of 20th century poets, artists, filmmakers, musicians and producers, but especially the British sound and concrete poet Bob Cobbing. I聽am also聽undertaking practice-led research into the relationship between diaspora, community organisation and the European avant-garde.

    Highlights

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Programme Director, BA Creative Writing and English
    • Admissions Officer, BA Creative Writing and English
    • Director of the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre

    Visiting posts

    • Writer in Residence , , 01 August 2014 to 01 September 2014
    • Writer in Residence , , 01 September 2013 to 01 September 2013

    Professional memberships

    • Member of the Council for British Research in the Levant

    Honours and awards

    • Team-Based Fieldwork Award: Incarceration and Poetry: The Creative Writing Workshop as a Mode of Cultural Transmission and Identity Formation in Palestine The Council for British Research in the Levant,
    • Artists鈥 International Development Award of 拢2000 to travel to Palestine to deliver poetry workshops to refugees, and to take up residency at the Palestine Writing Centre in Birzeit, Palestine. Arts Council England and the British Council , December 2013
    • Writer in Residence (Summer 2014) The University of Arizona Poetry Center,
    • AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, part of the Beyond Text Project , December 2008

    ORCID

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Sound poetry
    • Experimental and Avant-Garde Poetics
    • Poetics of Solidarity and Relationality
    • Politics and poetry
    • Small Press Publication
    • The representation of race in poetry
    • Eco-poetics
    • Radical and liberatory pedagogies

    Research overview

    I specialise in American and British literature from the 20th and 21st centuries, with a focus on experimental and Late Modernist poetry from 1945. My monograph-in-progress, Sounding the Room of British Poetry: Internationalising Community in the School of Bob Cobbing, is a literary history of the international poetic and avant-garde from 1945-2008, as seen through the institutional commitments that defined the careers of a range of 20th century poets, artists, filmmakers, musicians and BBC producers. In addition, I am undertaking practice-led research into the relationship between diaspora cultures, community organisation and the European avant-garde.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    • Director ,

    Research projects

    Incarceration and Poetry: The Creative Writing Workshop as Mode of cultural Transmission and Identify Formation in Palestine

    Abstract

    The central research objective of this study is to investigate how the Anglo-American model of the creative writing workshop (central to Creative Writing pedagogy in Higher Education) can be instituted in Palestine as a research tool, and to foster individual and collective expressions of identity. The workshop format will be used to examine how the creation of new poetry by Palestinians who self-identify as educators can stage an encounter between identities past and present. Historic documents produced by Palestinian political prisoners under conditions of Israeli imprisonment 鈥 held in the Abu Jihad Museum for the Prisoner Movement Affairs (The Prisoners鈥 Archive) 鈥 will be brought into workshops to encourage contemporary creative expressions of Palestinian identity. How will Palestinian educators respond to materials from the Prisoners鈥 Archive? How far are participants familiar with forums for literary reception and performance in Arabic Culture (such as the literary salon 鈥 muj膩las膩t) and which are analogous to the Anglo-American creative-writing workshop? How will participant writer-educators adapt the workshop mode for use with their students? Further, to what extent might working through these questions form the basis of a poetics that is cognisant of the socio-political dynamics of the interventions being made?

    The study brings together research in a variety of fields. First, it extends the 鈥榬elational art practice鈥 (Bourriaud, 1998) of Italian artist Beatrice Catanzaro whose project, A Needle in the Binding (centred on the Prisoners鈥 section of the Nablus Library), led to prisoners鈥 books becoming recognized as an important cultural legacy in Palestine. Catanzaro鈥檚 artwork (which also involved conversations with political prisoners and the identification of key items within a large archive of prisoner writings) recognised that Palestinian detainees had 鈥榤anaged to transform [Israeli] prisons into educational workshops of a sort鈥 (Institute for Public Art). She argued for the leading role that the Palestinian political prisoners鈥 movement played in developing national education in Palestine. Second, by identifying prisons as educational workshops, recognising their contribution to national education, this project understands The Prisoners鈥 Archive to be part of Palestine鈥檚 cultural heritage. Dr Saida Jasser Affouneh (Dean of Education, AN Najah, National University in Nablus), argues that putting 鈥榟eritage鈥 (alongside the essence of the Islamic culture, doctrine and affiliation) at the centre of an educational programme might be the only way 鈥楶alestinian children can retain a sense of moral balance in the continuing conflict鈥 (Affouneh, 2007). This present study develops both Affouneh and Catanzaro鈥檚 research. It works with adult educators as creative writers to build capacity for future educational projects (potentially with children) in Palestine. It respects prisoner writings as cultural heritage and investigates the extent to which they can inspire new creative expressions of collective and individual identity, which will in turn protect and enrich that heritage.

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within 糖心logo入口:
    6

    I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking practice-based or more traditional research in any of my areas of interest. My current and past PhD students who I have supervised give a further indication of my research interests:聽

    Recent Completions

    • Fran Lock, 'Impossible Telling: Defining the Epistolary聽Form聽in Contemporary Poetry in Relation to Mourning and to Trauma'. Co-Supervised with Peter Fifield. (Completed 2020)

    Current Students

    • Bronac Ferran, 'Mediating the Concrete: Hansj枚rg Mayer as a Poet of聽Transition'. Co-Supervised with Martin Eve and Mark Blacklock. Candidate awarded School of Arts funding.
    • Matt Martin, 'Nation Language Poetry as Political Resistance in the Caribbean and the UK'. Co-Supervised with Emily Senior. Candidate awarded the Stewart Hall PhD Scholarship.
    • Kayombo Chingonyi, 'Musical Sampling, Literary Allusion, and Performance Praxis in Black Atlantic Poetry'. Candidate awarded the Diversity 100 PhD studentship.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • SHANI CADWALLENDER
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Title of thesis:
      Trees Revisited: Exploring the Nature of Identity in Arboreal Poetry.
    • JAN KOFI-TSEKPO
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
    • ROGELIO BRAGA
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • MATTHEW MARTIN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Nation Language as Political Resistance in the Poetry of Kamau Brathwaite and Bill Griffiths
      Description:

      My research focuses on the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite鈥檚 鈥榥ation language鈥 poems written with Caribbean speech patterns, and on comparable approaches in the English avant-garde poet Bill Griffiths鈥 use of dialect from North East England. The goal is to find ways for English poetry to learn from theory and practice that have developed in the Caribbean, responding with similar innovativeness to its own local conditions of language and culture. Voice may therefore be given to communities that are often marginalised from centres of literary power, contributing to a sense of common cause and a shared body of tactics for diverse communities around Britain, in the Caribbean, and elsewhere.

      Awarded:
      2024
    • FRANCES LOCK
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2020
    • BRONAC FERRAN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2023

    Teaching

    I currently teach on several BA and MA Creative Writing programmes and modules including:


    I supervise final year BA dissertation students and students on 糖心logo入口's MA and . 

    Teaching modules

    • The Creative Critical Seam
    • Climate Change Communication: Feeling, Thinking, Acting
    • Writing the Planet
    • Poetry Workshop 1
    • Poetry Workshop
    • Poetry Workshop 2: The Open Page
    • The Writing Industry
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    • Willey, Stephen (2022) . Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry 14 (1), ISSN 1758-972X.
    • Willey, Steve (2017) . Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 42 (1-2), pp. 109-126. ISSN 0308-0188.
    • Willey, Stephen Bryne, James, ed. (2016) . The Wolf 33, pp. 20-22. ISSN 1755-3458.

    Book

    • Willey, Stephen Staunton, M., ed. (2020) . Oxford; Saint Germain-en-Laye: The Onslaught Press.

    Book section

    • Willey, Stephen (2015) . In: Freeman, R. (ed.) Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine. New York, U.S.: Or Books. ISBN 9781682190081.

    External Repositories

  • Business and community

    Business and community

    Outreach

    I believe in the importance of communicating my research and sharing my expertise in teaching beyond the academy and do this by partnering with local and internationally based arts-organisations.

    During 2016 I worked with Miriam Sherwood (Producing Assistant, Family/Theatre and Heritage) at the Battersea Arts Centre to deliver a Town Hall Talk which looked at the heritage of the building and the local area through the prism of the contemporary and experimental poetry ephemera held in the BAC archives.聽

    I have worked collaboratively with Arts Council Funded press Knives Forks and Spoons, the publisher of my book Sea Fever (a poem that thinks through the connection between life in occupied Palestine and migration experiences into Europe) to install pages from the poem as part of the Blackpool Illuminations, an event which draws in audiences from across the UK.

    In the same year I contributed to and strengthened the School of Arts/ICA partnership by speaking at the 鈥楳ediating City-Scapes Symposium鈥 on 鈥楾he Poetics of the London Filmmakers鈥 Cooperative鈥.

    My commitment to radio as a means of disseminating my research is evidenced through my participation in the 鈥楳aking Conversations鈥 series (broadcast on and archived at Resonance FM) where I discussed the work of British concrete poet Bob Cobbing, and in the podcast 鈥樚切膌ogo入口 Voices 42: Arts Week 201聽 6 Highlights鈥 where I spoke on 鈥楥reative Writing and the Refugee鈥.

    I am active as a reviewer of other poets, including writing an 鈥業ntroduction to the Poetry of Will Rowe鈥 for 鈥楥ulture Matters鈥 (a collective of writers and activists who have come together to provide webspace and editorial and technical support for a 'broad left' cultural struggle for a better society).

    Since 2015 I have also continued to deepen my relationships with poets in the West Bank including Alice Yousef (who participated in 鈥榃ords on the Move 4鈥 2019), Najwan Darwish, Mohammed A. Jamoos (Director of Fundraising at Al Quds University, previously Deputy Manager of the Abu Jihad Museum), the Lajee Centre (a Palestinian-led NGO and grassroots cultural center) and The Palestine Writing Workshop.

    I maintain active links with the experimental poetry micro-publishing scene in London and internationally, and through the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre I have hosted readings in collaboration with Veer Press, Crater Press and Spiralbound Editions, all of whom have been active in publishing the work of 糖心logo入口 PhD students alongside other internationally recognised poets.

    I have run events for 糖心logo入口鈥檚 Arts Week, an annual showcase of the varied activities of 糖心logo入口鈥檚 academics, putting on events, including hosting three contemporary American poets Rob Halpern, Peter Gizzi and Matvei Yankelevich, and running a symposium on Halpern鈥檚 work.

    Finally, I also respond to outreach efforts made by colleagues in other departments. After attending 鈥楾ejas Verdes: I was not there鈥 鈥 a collaborative project between sociologist聽Dr Margarita Palacios聽and London-based Chilean visual artist聽Livia Marin, held at the聽Peltz Gallery (3 June to 15 July 2016) I responded to an invitation to provide a textual response to the exhibition which I did in a series of poems.

    I serve on the editorial committee of the Mechanic Institute Review Online.