‘Colliding voices’: Discovering, Transforming and Enacting Cornwall’s Poetics

This Research & Knowledge Exchange Doctoral Project brief summarises our priority areas of research interest under the heading of: ‘Colliding voices’: Discovering, Transforming and Enacting Cornwall’s Poetics.

We welcome all research degree applications aligned with and in response to this brief.

Cornwall is a rural-industrial landscape and has been a popular tourist destination for centuries, inspiring poetry from those passing through, those on tour, ideological settlers and Cornwall-born poets alike. For many years the Cornish landscape was considered so remote to outsiders that it became a vehicle for the impossible, magical and Other in literature, including for popular novelists such as Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker and Daphne du Maurier.

This doctoral proposal encourages candidates to consider the distinctive nature of Cornwall, its poetry and its poetic cultures, especially encouraging proposals drawing on the wealth of archival materials held by Falmouth and Exeter university library services and our amazing network of partner organisations. As well as original archival research this PhD could be an interdisciplinary and practice-based project involving creative writing, film-making, interactive digital storytelling, or indeed any creative arts practice; or the project could have an educational component. This could be a focussed project using a specific writer’s archive, or it could engage more broadly with a range of archives and their respective museum and heritage sector representations.

The candidate might like to explore the poetics of nineteenth century visitors such as Lord Byron and Robert Southey, or twentieth century settlers such as DH Lawrence, Frances Bellerby, John Betjeman, WS Graham and H.D., or they might like to consider prominent Cornish poets such as Charles Causley, Jack Clemo and AL Rowse. Equally, the candidate might like to look at Cornish poetics today, considering contemporary writers like Rachael Allen, Philip Gross and Ella Frears. We welcome applications from candidates interested in any and all of these possibilities.

Projects deriving from this brief are expected to sit within the Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy and the following department.

All successful research degree project proposals must emphasise a clear alignment between the project idea and our Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy.