Preoccupations
My work attends to migration, displacement, contemporary poetry, and genre. Through various mediums and modes, my academic, community outreach, and creative projects all share an interest in articulating the ways in which the shapes of the constructions we live within imply and affect our shifting perceptions of our shifting world.

In writing, creative practice, and digital media, I engage with criticism, students, and public audiences.  My approach to (what is often) the poetry of small spaces is interdisciplinary and transnational wherever possible. I currently have several interrelated projects underway, including: a digital archive of Syrian migration, funded by the British Academy; a contracted collection of interviews with contemporary poets offering a cultural history of New York School poetry; the AHRC funded co-organization of a creation of a New York School Studies association; a (volunteer) community engagement project; and a book project focusing on the perpetuity of displacement, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (See Current Projects for more). Whether exploring the contours of a contemporary poem's stanza, or the contours of the refugee's construction (in mind) of home, my work is engaged in the greater project of the humanities in so far as it aims to qualify the immeasurablity of everyday life with sensitivity its forms and shapes.




          These things are with us every day
          even on beachheads and biers. They
          do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

                                       - O'Hara "Today"
 

Occupations

Picture
In no particular order, I have lived, worked, written, organized, edited, researched, studied, and taught throughout the east coast of the USA, the Middle East, and England.

I am currently Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary World Literature at the University of Reading, and Diversity and Inclusion Lead for the School of Languages and Literature, championing inclusivity in curriculum and culture. I am also Principal investigator on the British Academy funded "Lost and Found?: Testimonies of Migration, Resettlement, and Displacement." In 2021, I will be a Leverhulme Research Fellow.