Dr Wanda O'Connor

Professional biography

I am a poet and scholar of contemporary poetry and poetics, an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Lecturer in Creative Writing. I studied Classics (BA Hons) in Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures and English Literature (MA) both at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. I completed my PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at Cardiff University in 2019. I am co-editor of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry and a member of the interdisciplinary research group Critical Poetics at Nottingham Trent University. Recent publications include: 'Renovating the open field: Innovative women poets reclaiming an erasure history’ in The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900, ‘Dark choral’ in Marsh Hawk Review, 'Ecopoetic encounters: unsettling anthropocentric assumptions via constraint-based anthologethnography' in New Writing, and elsewhere.

Research interests

Innovative poetry and poetics, projective poetics, postmodern theory, contemporary women’s poetry, ecopoetry and site-specific writing, hybrid literatures, literature and philosophy, libretto, critical theory, film theory, performative space, translation, practice-based research in interdisciplinary contexts, the avant-garde, situationist theory and psychogeography, Ancient Greek tragedy and mythology.

Doctoral students

I welcome students with interests in contemporary North American and British poetry and poetics, ecopoetry and site-specific writing, innovative poetries, poetry and philosophy, women's poetry, and poetry reflective of classical themes and subjects. 

Current doctoral students: 

Clare Best - The Many Might-Have-Beens: re-membering, writing and rewriting fragmented and layered life narratives

Teaching

The Open University

A111: Discovering the Arts and Humanities 
A112: Cultures
A215: Creative Writing
A363: Advanced Creative Writing

Previous teaching

The Poetry School

Reading Classical Languages: responding to Ancient Greek and Latin texts and fragments 
To be unhomed: reading and writing (as) Wretched Strangers
American poetry: the San Francisco Renaissance

Cardiff University

Creative Writing seminars
English Literature seminars
Guest Lecturer, Postmodern Poetry
Guest Lecturer, MA Creative Writing

Concordia University

Mediterranean Mythology and Greek History
Greek Mythology
Guest Lecturer, Milton and Paradise Lost
Guest Lecturer, Wordsworth and the Sublime
Historical Survey of British Literature
Historical Survey of Medieval Literature
Graduate Seminar in University Teaching
Technical Writing and Communication