Dr Paul Wright
Contact Details
School of Cultural StudiesTel: 01267 676721
E-mail: p.wright@trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk
Job Title
Head of SchoolRole in the University
Head of SchoolBackground
As well as being Head of School I’m Course Director for both BA and MA programmes in Creative Writing. I teach on a wide range of creative writing modules, including modules on writing poetry and prose and writing workshops, I also contribute to other degree programmes within the school. In recent years I have taught in the following areas: the Renaissance, the Eighteenth Century, Romanticism and Science Fiction.
My research has largely been concerned with Romanticism and aspects of contemporary poetry. I am a member of the British Association for Romantic Studies and the New Zealand Studies Association., and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
I have a First Class Hons. Degree in English Language and Literature (Hull 1989) and an MA in Romanticism (York 1990). In 1995 I was awarded a PhD by the University of Hull for research on ‘Keats and the Aesthetics of Seizure’; my thesis reconsidered Keats’ poetry and thought in the light of contemporaneous aesthetic theories and the wider impact of the empirical method at the turn of the nineteenth century, particularly in the medical world in which the young Keats moved. I have published on Milton, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Wilde, Shaw, the sublime, contemporary poetry and the graphic novel. In 2001 I completed work on a fully annotated edition of Keats’ poetry, with an 8,000 word critical introduction for Wordsworth Classics. In 2005 I completed a similar edition of the selected works of Byron. I am currently researching into and writing on contemporary poetry from New Zealand and on the interface between 19th Century poetry and science. I also review regularly for a number of publications including Nineteenth Century Contexts, Gwales, BRONZS, and BARS: Bulletin. I have attended a number of conferences in institutions throughout Britain and presented papers that reflect my research interests and I have worked as a reader for the University of Wales Press and the Welsh Books Council.
In 2003-4 I collaborated with the travel writer John Harrison on an AHRB/Academi funded project exploring the connections between creative writing practice and the techniques of travel writing. I am currently exploring with a number of agencies the use of creative writing within a range of what might broadly be called therapeutic contexts.
