Projects per year
Personal profile
Personal Statement
I joined Strathclyde in spring 2022 and am currently employed as a Lecturer in English & Creative Writing. My research employs creative and critical methods to explore issues of ecology, energy, technology and everyday life. Previously, I taught at the University of Glasgow, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Scottish Universities International Summer School (University of Edinburgh).
Outside of academia, I am director of SPAM Press: a poetry publisher and community interest company which supports experimental and post-internet literature. Between 2018-2024 I was a member of A+E Collective, a collective concerned with generating thoughtful approaches to climate emergency through art, design and poetry.
Research Interests
My academic interests hinge on the question: how do literature and culture respond to, and intervene in, critical issues of climate breakdown, energy transition and technological change? I am passionate about collaborative, practise-led and interdisciplinary approaches to this question. My research is currently centred on the role of sleep and dreaming in literature, culture and daily life. With the sound artist Dr Kevin Leomo, I am one half of Project Somnolence: a portable lab for exploring the different ways people experience sleep, sleep disturbance and dreams. Funded by the University of Strathclyde and the Dear Green Bothy, Project Somnolence engages practice-based methods including poetry, music, performance scoring and participatory workshops in conversation with perspectives from psychology, philosophy and the environmental humanities. I was also recently lead on Brilliant Vibrating Interface: Queering the Post-Internet through Poetry and Practice - a year-long series of workshops - 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 the author of over twenty creative print publications including chapbooks, exhibition books, collections and anthologies. My most recent poetry collection, Cinders, was published by the Bay Area press Krupskaya. Other works include The Luna Erratum (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021), String Feeling (Erotoplasty, 2022), Visions & Feed (HVTN Press, 2022), Cocoa and Nothing - with Colin Herd (SPAM Press, 2023) and An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun (Hem Press, 2023). With Rhian Williams, I co-edited an anthology, the weird folds: everyday poems from the anthropocene (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020), and with Aaron Kent edited The Last Song: Words for Frightened Rabbit (Broken Sleep, 2023). A collection written with Ian Macartney, Languishing, cute, is forthcoming with Tapsalteerie in 2025, and a novella, The Indigo Hours, is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books, also in 2025. My work has been widely anthologised and I have fulfilled creative commissions from musicians such as Lanark Artefax, North Sea Dialect and Zoee, and organisations such as the Alasdair Gray Archive and ArtWalkPorty. An exhibition with Jack O’Flynn and Katie O’Grady, The Palace of Humming Trees, was shown at French Street Studios (now Strangefield), Glasgow in 2021.
I have published critical work on areas such as post-internet poetry, solarity, twentieth and twenty-first century American poetry, literary representations of meadows, commoning and atmospheric imaginaries in anthropocene lyric. 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. The book version of this, Midsummer Song (Hypercritique) is forthcoming with NoUP Press in autumn 2024.
Community engagement is important to my work. I have run practise-led workshops and public events for organisations such as Beyond Form Creative Writing, Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, The 87 Press, Glasgow Goes Green Festival, Glasgow Science Festival, Glasgow Zine Festival, StAnza Festival, the Alasdair Gray Archive, Dear Green Bothy, Agile City and Book Week Scotland. These workshops focus on areas such as dream ecologies, sleep, the everyday, refusal and failure, experimental journaling, entanglement, poetry and pop music, trash poetics, weather and postcapitalist desire. My work as a writer, critic and collaborator has been highlighted in places such as It’s Nice That, The Guardian, Saltire Society, Scottish Contemporary Artists Network, BBC Radio 3, The White Review, Tank, Dazed, The Skinny and The Poetry Project. I have been commended in various literary prizes: most recently my debut collection The Luna Erratum was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s Scottish Poetry Book of the Year (2022) and its follow-up, Visions & Feed, was shortlisted for ASLE-uki’s Creative Writing Prize (2023).
Teaching Interests
I teach English and Creative Writing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
I would be open to PhD proposals in English on the following topics:
- Twentieth and twenty-first century American poetry and poetics
- Ecopoetics and ecocriticism
- Literature, energy and infrastructure
- Small press poetries and publishing
- Post-internet art and poetry
- Literary theory
- Modernity and the everyday
I would be open to Creative Writing PhD proposals on the following topics:
I am particularly interested in poetry and nonfiction which explores themes of ecology, environment, energy, infrastructure, ekphrasis, pop culture, sleep and dreams. I would also welcome proposals in any genre which take a post-internet approach in form and content. I look for PhD projects which are bold, experimental, critically-informed and often taking a hybrid approach to genre and craft.
Academic / Professional qualifications
I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
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 Education, PGCert in Teaching, Learning and Assessment within the Disciplines, University Of Strathclyde
Award Date: 7 Sept 2023
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
Fingerprint
- 1 Similar Profiles
Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Suicide prevention in later life
Hafford-Letchfield, T. (Co-investigator), Karastoyanova-Gibson, K. (Co-investigator), Rasmussen, S. (Co-investigator) & Sledmere, M. (Co-investigator)
ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council)
1/04/23 → 31/03/28
Project: Research - Internally Allocated
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Pop-up Poetry Studio
Sledmere, M. (Principal Investigator)
Project: Knowledge Exchange (Conference / Seminar Hosting)
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Subterranean Homesick Citrus
Sledmere, M., 22 Jan 2025, Tangerine Dream. Vol. 1.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Prizes
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Best Scottish Poem: Lifestream
Sledmere, M. (Recipient), 2020
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Activities
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Scottish Literary Magazines Workshop
Sledmere, M. (Organiser), Kevill, S. (Organiser) & Bell, E. (Organiser)
19 Mar 2025Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
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Alycia Pirmohamed
Sledmere, M. (Host)
10 Mar 2025Activity: Hosting a visitor types › Hosting an academic visitor