My research examines modern and contemporary poetry in relation to infrastructure, cultural policy, and nationalism.
Late Documentary Poetics
My in-progress monograph provides a literary historical account of the development of documentary poetry in Canada and the United States. This project connects modernist documentary poetics to technologies of liberal statecraft, like the New Deal in the US and the Massey Commission in Canada, and argues that contemporary—or “late”—documentary poets strategically adopt documentary forms to contest culture’s longstanding instrumentalization in the service of liberal governmentality. The monograph builds on my SSHRC-funded doctoral dissertation, which received a Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal in the Humanities. Peer-reviewed material from this project is published in ASAP Journal.
Infrastructural Poetics
I recently co-edited a special issue of College Literature on “Infrastructural Poetics” with Michael Shea. The issue gathers essays at the intersection of poetics and critical infrastructure studies and our introduction argues that “infrastructuralism” names a vibrant strand of contemporary poetics criticism that fuses formalism with interest in mediation and conditions of material production.
National Poetry Month: Arts Funding & its Nationalisms
My SSHRC-supported postdoctoral project turns to National Poetry Month to investigate the relationship between arts funding and shifting nationalist frameworks. Across the twentieth century, funding for the arts played a strategic role in the liberal state’s consolidation of national cultural identity at home and expansion of cultural diplomacy abroad. In our current nationalist era characterized by protectionism, hardening borders, and the erosion of multilateral institutions like UNESCO, what new pressures and expectations do writers and literary organizations face with respect to funding? As a transnational node that connects a wide range of small to mid-sized institutional agents, National Poetry Month provides a focused case study of the channels through which poets share their work and participate in the construction of national reading publics.