Professor Zoë Skoulding

Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing / Director of Research, Impact and Engagement

z.skoulding@bangor.ac.uk

0000-0001-7716-8897

Professor Zoë Skoulding

View Professor Zoë Skoulding’s profile on the Bangor Research Portal

I am Professor in Poetry and Creative Writing in the School of Literatures, Languages and Linguistics and Undergraduate Course Director in Creative Writing. I co-direct ContemPo, the Centre for Contemporary Poetry http://contempo.bangor.ac.uk/index.php.en.

In my research I bring together my practice as a poet with a critical interest in place, sonic environments, ecopoetics and various forms of translation.

I am a Fellow of the English Association.

Position: Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing

Email: z.skoulding@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0) 1248 382106

Location: Room 311 New Arts

I teach creative writing, with a focus on poetry, the short story, creative translation and experimental writing. I also teach contemporary literature, with an emphasis on poetry, Welsh writing in English, and ecopoetics.

I am happy to consider PhD proposals relating to any of these areas. 

The core of my research is my practice as a poet. I am interested in exploring relationships between language and environments, whether urban or rural. Recent projects exploring lost rivers in Bangor and Paris investigate the interweaving of human and non-human lives. I translate from French, and my work also draws on a close connection between translation and creative practice, particularly in experimental contexts. I often collaborate with artists and musicians, and have performed my work across Europe, India and Latin America.

My critical work has focused on contemporary women poets and urban space, the Welsh modernist poet Lynette Roberts, and the role of listening in poetry, which is the focus of my forthcoming monograph.

From 2017 to 2018 I directed the AHRC-funded research network Poetry in Expanded Translation, which brought together an international grouping of poets, translators, critics, choreographers and musicians for a series of conferences.

I welcome proposals related to any aspect of my research or teaching, particularly in poetry, ecopoetics, creative translation and experimental writing.

2024

2023

  • Published“All the birds had called a conference”: Songs of the Emergency
    Skoulding, Z., 10 Jul 2023, "Places that the map can’t contain" Poetics in the Anthropocene. Fiedorczuk, J. & Piszczatowski, P. (eds.). V&R Unipress
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
  • Accepted/In pressOn Immersion: A Note on Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's Of Sea
    Skoulding, Z., 10 Jan 2023, (Accepted/In press) In: Paideuma. 51
    Research output: Contribution to journal › Special issue
  • PublishedThe Taste of Revolution
    Skoulding, Z., 27 Jul 2023, Literature and the Senses. Kern-Stähler, A. & Robertson, E. (eds.). Oxford: OUP, p. 339-354 (Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature).
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
  • Published“Who was ever only themselves?” Cross-border Ecologies of Translation
    Skoulding, Z., 29 Sept 2023, The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics. Fiedorczuk, J., Newell, M., Quetchenbach, B. & Tierney, O. (eds.). 10 p.
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

2022

2021

2020

  • PublishedA Revolutionary Calendar
    Skoulding, Z., 31 Aug 2020, Bristol: Shearsman Books. 130 p.
    Research output: Book/Report › Book
  • PublishedPoetry & Listening: The Noise of Lyric
    Skoulding, Z., 4 Nov 2020, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. (Poetry &...; vol. 10)
    Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
  • PublishedPoetry in Expanded Translation: Special Issue
    Skoulding, Z. (Editor) & Hilson, J. (Editor), Dec 2020, In: English. 69, 267
    Research output: Contribution to journal › Special issue › peer-review
  • PublishedThe Celestial Set-Up
    Skoulding, Z., 1 Jul 2020, Bethesda: Oystercatcher Press. 24 p.
    Research output: Book/Report › Book

2019

2017

2016

  • PublishedDisappearing sounds: poetry, noise and narrative
    Skoulding, Z. C., Kinzel, T. (Editor) & Mildorf, J. (Editor), 25 Apr 2016, Audionarratology: Interfaces of Sound and Narrative. 2016 ed. Walter De Gruyter, (Narratologia; vol. 52).
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
  • PublishedTeint: For the Bièvre/Pour la Bièvre
    Skoulding, Z. & Portante, J. (Translator), 18 Feb 2016, Swansea: Hafan Books. 48 p. (Boiled String Poetry Chapbooks)
    Research output: Book/Report › Book

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2004

  • PublishedThe Mirror Trade
    Skoulding, Z., 1 Jan 2004, Seren.
    Research output: Book/Report › Book

2025

2024

2023

  • Border Crossings II

    14 Dec 2023 – 15 Dec 2023

    Activity: Participation in Academic conference (Invited speaker)
  • Public Poetry Performance at Po-Ex, SIMPOSIO INTERNACIONAL DE POESÍA EXPERIMENTAL Santiago de Chile

    Sound poetry performance

    BAR SANTO REMEDIO, PROVIDENCIA, Santiago de Chile

    26 Oct 2023

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Contributor)
  • Festival Internacional de Poesia Joven Jauria de Palabras, Bolivia

    Professor Zoë Skoulding was an invited speaker at this festival focused on developing an interest in poetry among younger audiences in the city of Santa Cruz and the rural town of Cuevo. This festival has developed with a specific youth focus. The host organisation, based at the cultural centre Casa Melchor Pinto, works with a number of cultural centres, libraries, and educational organisations to present poetry, in this annual event, as a literary and creative force for change. Skoulding gave readings of her own poetry in Spanish translation, and discussed poetry with children and young writers with a view to encouraging them by helping them to see the international relevance of their creative work. Reading at public events alongside young Bolivian poets and giving workshops enabled conversations about poetry from different perspectives.

    30 Aug 2023 – 4 Sep 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Contributor)
  • Outdoor workshops with schools

    Outdoor multilingual poetry workshops in Coed Cyrnol in collaboration with montenegrofisher for students from Ysgol Brynrefail and Ysgol Treffynnon. Funded by BU IIA

    17 Jul 2023

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Schools engagement (Contributor)
  • GŴYL TYSILIO FESTIVAL

    Poetry readings featuring Ifor ap Glyn, Manon Awst, Lee Duggan and Zoë Skoulding, a poetry workshop with montenegofisher, and augmented reality mapping by Joanna Wright. Organised by Zoë Skoulding as part of BU IIA.

    16 Jul 2023

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Contributor)
  • Silesius Poetry Festival

    Livestreamed poetry reading from A Marginal Sea and discussion.

    21 May 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Contributor)
  • Resounding Bodies: Ecopoetics, Listening and Translation

    The challenge for humans in a time of crises for the climate and biological diversity is to change our thinking, to decentre ourselves and understand our place in continuity with the world and what’s in it. How can experimental practices of poetry and translation enable different kinds of listening – and therefore new kinds of community – across the boundaries of languages, species, and forms of knowledge? Professor Zoë Skoulding will draw on examples from her own writing and translation to explore poetry’s acoustic context and what this means for ecological relationships.

    15 May 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Invited talk (Speaker)

2022

2021

  • THE AMERICAN LITERARY TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION 2021

    15 Oct 2021 – 17 Oct 2021

    Activity: Participation in Academic conference (Speaker)
  • Traduction – relation

    4 Oct 2021 – 8 Oct 2021

    Activity: Participation in Academic conference (Speaker)
  • Creating Across Languages Video Workshop Series

    As part of Professor Zoë Skoulding’s AHRC Leadership Fellowship 2020-22, she developed a project to encourage new approaches to creative writing in the new Curriculum for Wales. Meeting regularly with a team of education advisors from the GwE Gogledd Schools Improvement Service, she led development of a pilot unit of work for Year 8/9 pupils. Working with invited Welsh and international poets, she designed and co-delivered a series of twelve video workshops for use in teaching Welsh, English and French, modelling techniques for teaching poetry as a creative multilingual practice. These now form the basis for discussions with teachers in selected north Wales schools, who will collaborate on developing their own schemes of work structured around these materials but adapted to their specific contexts. These will be trialled with pupils in 2022-23 and used as a model to encourage further responses to the Curriculum for Wales.

    3 May 2021 – 1 Sep 2022

    Activity: Participation in Academic workshop, seminar, course (Speaker)

  • Migrating knowledges: Science, subjectivity and landscape

    01/02/2022 – 01/08/2022 (Finished)

  • Poetry in Transatlantic Translation: Circulation and Practice

    01/09/2020 – 01/08/2022 (Finished)

  • Poetry in Expanded Translation

    01/01/2017 – 01/08/2019 (Finished)

    Description

    Translation may seem like a simple matter of transposition between languages, but the translation of poetry in particular reveals the fascinating complexity and richness that comes from the interface of different languages and cultures. Language itself is constantly changing, and experimental forms of poetry have embraced the complex relations between words, meanings and the spaces they inhabit. As twenty-first century poetry expands into the possibilities of different media through international readings, performances and festivals, it also expands possibilities for translation. Poetry has always circulated internationally. The network will challenge the widespread view of autonomously monolingual poetic traditions while discovering how exchange between languages works in artistic terms, and how it brings cultural particularities into view.

    Links:

I led the AHRC network Poetry in Expanded Translation 2017-2018.

http://expanded-translation.bangor.ac.uk/

This network brought together practitioners and critics of poetry and translation with visual and sound artists to discover new ways of creating and interpreting language across art forms and cultures. In the context of a changing Europe, it analysed the impact of experimental traditions that continue to forge links between different languages, and discovered new ways of presenting poetry to multilingual audiences. Through its link with the National Poetry Library in London's Southbank Centre, it invited active involvement from readers and practitioners of poetry beyond academic contexts. At a time when technologies such as machine translation are enabling communication, the apparent untranslatability of poetry makes it a crucial site for the creative exploration and understanding of intercultural difference. 

A collaboration with the artist Ben Stammers was supported by the Arts Council of Wales and the ESRC Bangor Impact Acceleration Award.

http://www.bangoradda.org/

rAdda is a collaborative art project that involves observing and thinking about the river and its relationship with the city. Through walks, performances, visual art and text, we are exploring the Adda as a connection between a disappearing past and a yet to be imagined future.