Dr Alex Wylie

Teaching

I teach mainly on the Liberal Arts Foundation Year, and also on the Literature programme. This is an introductory, inter- and multi-disciplinary programme which has been running since 2018/19. I take responsibility for literature and creative writing teaching/marking/assessment, but my teaching also comprises such disciplines as philosophy, politics, history, religion and ethics, and language/linguistics.

I have also taught on the Creative Writing and Publishing (MA) programmes at YSJ.

In academic year 2024/25, I am teaching on:

• LIB3001M: York in Flux
• LIB3007M: Identity and Otherness: The Self and Society (module lead)
• LIB3008M: Truth and Invention: Culture, Myth and Representation
• LIB3006M: Independent Project
• LIB3004M: Freedom and Justice (module lead)
• LIB3005M: Imagining the Future: Environment, Apocalypse and the Digital Revolution
• LIT7003: Historicizing the Contemporary
• LIT7004: World, Globe, Literature
• LIT4004: Introduction to Literary Studies (2)
• LIT6007: The Experimental Century

Research

I am a poet and literary critic. I have published articles on modern poetry and poetics, often with an emphasis on the relationship between form and politics, on intellectual and historical contexts, and poetry's place in public discourse.

I welcome PhD applications in literature, especially in the areas of modern/contemporary poetry and poetics, modernist literature and its legacies, and contemporary literature and cultural politics.

I have twice been a recipient of Arts Council grants in support of my creative writing.

I am currently supervising:

• Sam Szanto, 'M/Other: How can selves be created and identities formed through the writing of mother poetry?' (Creative Practice PhD, co-supervising with Dr John Challis)

Publications and conferences

Single-authored books

Geoffrey Hill’s Later Work: Radiance of Apprehension. 200pp. Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-5261-2494-4

Krishna’s Anarchy. 70pp. Eyewear Publishing, London: 2023. ISBN: 978-1915406309.

Secular Games. 84pp. Eyewear Publishing, London: 2018. ISBN: 978-1912477241. (Shortlisted for Melita Hume Prize, 2016.)

Journal articles

‘Not by an act of God’: Capital in the Work of Basil Bunting’, Cambridge Quarterly. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming 2025.

‘A Proxy for Submission: On Taste and Tastefulness in Contemporary Poetry’. PN Review 267, September-October 2022.

‘The Bureaucratic Sublime: On the Secret Joys of Contemporary Poetry’. PN Review 262, November-December 2021.

‘Democratic Rags: On the “Democratic” in Contemporary Poetry’. PN Review 251, January-February 2020.

‘Ivor Gurney’s Imperfection’. Essays in Criticism, Volume 68, Issue 1, January 2018, pp. 54-73, https://doi.org/10.1093/escrit/cgx029. Oxford University Press, 2018.

‘“Soft aftershocks of calm”: Order and Anarchy in Geoffrey Hill’s For the Unfallen’. Literary Imagination, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 259-273, doi:10.1093/litimag/imvo31. Oxford University Press, 2015.

‘Bunting and the Vile Patterns of Expediency’. Essays in Criticism, Volume 65, Issue 3, pp. 305-325, https://doi.org/10.1093/escrit/cgv014. Oxford University Press, 2015.

‘“It is not anyone’s dream”: C.H. Sisson’s Utopias’. Cambridge Quarterly, Volume 44, Issue 1, pp. 25-42, https://doi.org/10.1093/camqtly/bfv004. Oxford University Press, 2015.

‘“This: ad Socium?”: Verbal Power in Geoffrey Hill’s The Triumph of Love’. English, 2014, vol. 63, no. 243, pp. 330-346, doi:10/.1093/english/efu020. Oxford University Press. November 2014.

‘Sisson’s Troy’. PN Review 217, 2014.

‘“Things that other people have desired”: The Contexts of T.S. Eliot’s “Portrait of a Lady”’. The Journal of the T.S. Eliot Society, 2014.

‘Eros in Geoffrey Hill’s Scenes from Comus’. English, Volume 60, Issue 230, Autumn 2011, Pages 198-211, https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efr003. Oxford University Press, 2011.

‘Prophet and Citizen: Fifty Years of Geoffrey Hill’s For the Unfallen’. PN Review 190, 2009.

Book chapters

‘Saying the Unsayable: Contemporary Poetry and the Structure of Feeling’, in Raymond Williams and Structures of Feeling (University of Wales Press, 2025). Forthcoming.

‘“Here lies a civil servant”: C.H. Sisson and the Possibility of Honesty’, Revisiting C.H. Sisson. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Poetry anthologies

New Poetries V. Michael Schmidt, Eleanor Crawforth eds. Carcanet, Manchester: 2011. ISBN: 978-1 847771-31-5. Nine poems.

Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland. Eva Bourke and Borbála Faragó eds. and intro. Dedalus: Dublin, 2011. ISBN: 9781906614218. Four poems.

Incertus. W.R. Irvine ed. Netherlea Press: Belfast, 2007. ISBN: 978-0955798504. Ten poems.

Reviews

‘National Ghosts’ (review of WWI anthologies and book of WWII poetry criticism) in PN Review 223.

A Treatise of Civil Power by Geoffrey Hill in PN Review 179.

Crocodiles and Obelisks by Jamie McKendrick in PN Review 181.

Clarity or Death! by Jeffrey Wainwright in PN Review 185.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000 by Justin Quinn in Irish Studies Review 17:2.

Collected Poems by Ciaran Carson in PN Review 188.

Greek by Theo Dorgan, The Sun-Fish by Eiléan ní Chuillenáin, and Until Before After by Ciaran Carson, in PN Review 196.

Deceiving Wild Creatures by Jeremy Over and We needed coffee but..., by Matthew Welton, in PN Review 199.

Maggot by Paul Muldoon, in PN Review 201.

The Resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen by Martin Mooney, and Ions by Jean Bleakney, in The Yellow Nib 7.

But the Body by Eamon Grennan, and The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass by Harry Clifton, in The Yellow Nib 9.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000 by Justin Quinn in Irish Studies Review vol. 17, no. 2, May 2009.

Professional activities

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and am a mentor and assessor on the HEA accreditation scheme at York St John.