Jon Gilbert

Profile

I graduated in 2013 at Liverpool Hope University where I earned a First Class combined honours degree in English Literature and Drama & Theatre Studies and later gained a Distinction in my MA by Creative Practice in 2015. I then worked as a graduate assistant at Liverpool Hope before working for the Library service of my home county, Lancashire. I began studying at Leeds in 2020 where I am researching experimental poetry and resistance. My research is fully funded by the John Barnard doctoral scholarship.

Along with my research, I am currently a Poetry Archive Intern working at the Brotherton Library, as well as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in the School of English. 

Research interests

• Experimental, visual, concrete and sound poetry
• Poetic text as score or script
• Contemporary poetry
• Poetry as performance

My thesis explores, compares and contrasts the practice of two experimental poets from the 1950s to the 1980s, Bob Cobbing, from the U.K. and Steve McCaffery, from North America. Both Cobbing and McCaffery chartered a complex course of interaction and collaboration with their contemporaries and institutions of power. My thesis places these writers/artists in a dialogue that, through a process of archival research and close reading, asks whether a poetics of resistance can be identified within their work. These insights then inform the production of a theory of resistive poetics.

Qualifications

• MA by Creative Practice (Distinction)
• BA with Honours in Drama & Theatre Studies and English Literature (Class One)