UCF Lecturer attends first Ecocriticism Conference in the Netherlands

Dr Kym Martindale, Senior Lecturer in English with Media Studies/Creative Writing at University College Falmouth will be presenting a paper, I need a map to tell me where I'm/not: Beating the Boundaries in the Poetry of Alice Oswald and Zoe Skoulding, at the New Grounds: Ecocriticism, Globalisation and Cultural Memory Conference to be held at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands, in January.

The first conference on ecocriticism in the Netherlands aims to bring together scholars from different ecocritical networks and countries to explore recent themes in ecocriticism. After its initial focus on the local and the regional, ecocriticism is now facing challenges posed by globalization, as explored in Ursula Heise's, Sense of Place, Sense of Planet (2008). The New Grounds conference will serve as a platform and forum for developments in ecocriticism, offering the possibility for interaction and an exploration of a variety of ecocritical themes in order to further define and broaden the ecocritical field.

Dr Martindale's paper will argue that the strategies of Timothy Morton, such as the coining of the term, ‘ambient poetics' in which typically, the ‘metaphysical opposition between writing and nature commonly found in Romantic-ecological discourse' is undone and that this undoing might further extend if it ‘articulates the person as environment', to the undoing altogether of the ‘notion of a center', can be discerned in the work of Alice Oswald and Zoë Skoulding.

Dr Martindale gained her doctorate in literary theory at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham in 2001, and the previous year, published a small volume of poetry with Redbeck Press. She joined University College Falmouth in September 2003 and in 2004, was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and spent a month in Scotland at the Hawthornden International Writers Retreat. In 2005, Flying Women Films produced a film for the Yorkshire Arts Festival, based on one of her short stories published years ago by Onlywomen Press, The Pied Piper.

Before joining University College Falmouth, Dr Martindale taught on the English programme for the Open University, whilst also teaching English and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University College, and on the Creative Writing Diploma for the Continuing Education Department at Bristol University. She has also taught with Philip Gross and Tim Liardet, both highly acclaimed poets.

Alice Oswald trained as a classicist and was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award in 1994. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.

Zoë Skoulding read English at Exeter University and following completion of her Ph.D. in Creative and Critical Writing in 2005, she was awarded an Academi (Arts Council of Wales) bursary and currently holds an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship (2007-2012) in Bangor's School of English.. As well as writing three collections of poetry, she has been involved in several projects combining performed poetry or lyrics with music, soundscape and film.

Organized in association with the Association for the study of Literature & Environment UK (ASLE-UK) and the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and the Environment (EASLCE), this international conference aims to bring together scholars working in the fields of literature, drama, the visual arts, film and music.

For more information please visit http://www.ru.nl/hlcs/newgrounds

For further information about BA(Hons) English with Media Studies or BA(Hons) English with Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/englishmedia or www.falmouth.ac.uk/englishcreaive, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 214359 or 01326 214358 respectively.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

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For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email: jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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