Projects per year
Personal profile
Personal Statement
I joined Strathclyde in 2022 as a Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry). My research and practice are wide-ranging, interdisciplinary and collaborative, exploring themes of ecology, technology and the everyday in literature. I have also taught English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, focusing on: poetry and poetics; nature and ecology; class, queerness and race in contemporary experimental writing; editing and publishing. Outside of academia, through organisations including Beyond Form Creative Writing, Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities and Glasgow Goes Green Festival, I have taught regular workshops and led courses on areas such as dream ecologies, the everyday, refusal and failure, experimental journaling, entanglement, poetry and pop music, trash poetics, weather and postcapitalist desire.
I am also a poet, artist, essayist, music journalist and editor, working between lyric, long-form and traditional forms such as sonnets, sestinas and ‘the commonplace book’. My work as a writer, critic and collaborator has been highlighted in places such as It’s Nice That, Scottish Contemporary Artists Network, BBC Radio 3, The White Review, Dazed, The Skinny and The Poetry Project. My poem ‘Ariosos for Lavish Matter’ was highly commended in the 2020 Forward Prize and a piece of creative-critical response to the work of Etel Adnan, Tangents, was long-listed for the Ivan Juritz Visual Arts Prize. My pamphlet, Polychromatics (Legitimate Snack, 2021), was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s Calum Macdonald Award.
Research Interests
My work spans research and practice. I am a member of the art and ecology collective A+E and editor-in-chief of SPAM: a post-internet poetry journal, magazine, podcast and press. In my capacity as artist and editor, I am passionate about collaboration, multimedia forms, public engagement, design communication and publishing. These aspects inform my expansive academic interests, which hinge on the question: how does literature and culture respond to, and intervene in, environmental crisis and technological change? My doctoral work addressed the contested term ‘anthropocene’ by developing a practice of ‘hypercritique’: a performance of im/possibility, attunement and hold within conditions of mass extinction, Covid-19 and climate breakdown.
I am the author of several books and pamphlets including nature sounds without nature sounds (2019), Rainbow Arcadia (2019), Infra·structure - with Katy Lewis Hood (2020), Chlorophyllia (2020), neutral milky halo (2020), Sonnets for Hooch - with Mau Baiocco and Kyle Lovell (2021), Soft Friction (2021), The Luna Erratum (2021) and String Feeling (2022). My second poetry collection, Visions & Feed, is forthcoming from HVTN Press. With Rhian Williams, I co-edited an anthology, the weird folds: everyday poems from the anthropocene (2020), featuring poets such as Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo, Samantha Walton, Rebecca Tamás, Daisy Lafarge and Sascha Akhtar. My work has been widely anthologised and I have worked with musicians including Lanark Artefax, North Sea Dialect and Zoee. An exhibition with Jack O’Flynn and Katie O’Grady, The Palace of Humming Trees, was shown at French Street Studios, Glasgow in 2021.
Currently, I am working on two book-length works of creative-critical study, and writing articles on the post-internet sonnet, lyric solarity, commoning and dreams. I am interested in pop culture, blog cultures and the internet, attention and affect in everyday life, dream theory and the politics of rest and play, Web 2.0, artificial intelligence, speculative aesthetics, small press and zine publishing, environmental and energy humanities, feminism and queer studies, technology and literature, new materialism, Romanticism, Modernism and poststructuralism. Broadly, my research covers contemporary Anglo-American poetry and poetics — from the post-internet scene of twenty-first century literature to innovative Language poetries of the twentieth century — in relation to theory and culture. Some examples of writers I have worked on include: Bernadette Mayer, Anne Boyer, Fred Moten, Jackie Wang, Rachael Allen, Eleanor Perry, Ben Lerner and Tom McCarthy.
I am due to deliver a three-year series of AHRC National Portfolio Grant-funded ecopoetics in associated with the87press in 2023-2025. Currently I am project leader on Brilliant Vibrating Interface: Queering the Post-Internet through Poetry and Practice - a year-long series of workshops, podcasts and editorial features leading up to a book-length publication and digital exhibition (funded by the Edwin Morgan Trust's The Second Life Award). I am also co-editing with Aaron Kent an anthology of poetry in response to the band Frightened Rabbit.
Teaching Interests
I teach creative writing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Education/Academic qualification
Master of Letters, Modernities, University of Glasgow
Award Date: 28 Nov 2017
Bachelor of Arts, MA English Literature, University of Glasgow
Award Date: 25 Jun 2015
Doctor of Literature, Doctorate of Fine Art in Creative Writing, University of Glasgow
External positions
Editor-in-chief , SPAM Press CIC
Jan 2017 → …
Keywords
- Contemporary Literature
- Ecocriticism
- Anthropocene
- Technology
- Modernism
- The Everyday
- Poststructuralism
- Pop Culture
- Feminism
- Queer Theory
- Ecopoetics
- Creative Nonfiction
- Small press poetries
- Independent publishing
- Post-Internet
- Art Writing
- Art and Design
- Trash poetics
- Dream writing
- The sonnet
- Creative Pedagogy
- Music
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Projects
- 1 Finished
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Brilliant Vibrating Interface: Queering the Post-Internet through Poetry and Practice
Sledmere, M., Dunlop, K., Hill-Woods, A. & Jung, L.
1/10/22 → 30/09/23
Project: Knowledge Exchange
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An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun
Sledmere, M., 19 Jun 2023, Birmingham. 254 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Sexting the billions: on post-internet sonnets
Sledmere, M., 11 May 2023, (Accepted/In press) In: Cambridge Humanities Review. 11 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Prizes
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Highly commended in the Forward Prize 2020
Sledmere, Maria (Recipient), 2019
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Saltire Society's 40 Under 40 Recognition
Sledmere, Maria (Recipient), 22 Jun 2023
Prize: National/international honour
Activities
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ArtWalkPorty
Maria Sledmere (Participant)
1 Sept 2023 → 10 Sept 2023Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
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Somnolent Cartographies: The Sonic Ecologies of Sleep
Maria Sledmere (Host) & Kevin Leomo (Host)
7 Jul 2023Activity: Public Engagement and Outreach › Media Participation