Congratulations to new Fellow and ardent literary critic, Dr Alex Freer
Alex, Lucy’s Fellow and Director of Studies for Part I English, shares his thoughts on life, teaching and passion for his subject
Rebecca Goss, a poet, tutor and mentor, returns to college to foster good writing practice
In October 2020, Rebeccca will take up the role of inaugural Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Lucy Cavendish and describes it as a ‘huge honour’. Rebecca has a longstanding relationship with the college - reading at the Women's Word festival in 2010 and then taking part in the Connections: Science, Poetry and the Brain project in 2019.
Rebecca will be returning to the College, once again as a writer, but this time able to engage with students directly. As stated on the RLF website, the principal aim of the Fellow’s work is to foster good writing practice across disciplines and media. Rebecca says:
“I am thrilled to be coming to Lucy Cavendish, and have always felt so welcome. I will be there to assist students and staff from across the College with their writing skills. I feel this is exactly the right time in my career to be taking up this role. I am an experienced published poet with four books, but I also recently returned to university myself, as a mature student. I completed a PhD by Publication at UEA in 2019, and during my time there learnt a lot about academic writing. I feel I can share my experiences now, of being an undergraduate at 18, and also a mature student at 45!”
Rebecca’s main tasks will be to assist in the practice of good and clear academic writing. Students from across the university will be able to book a consultation with a sample of their work. Not being a subject specialist, Rebecca won't be commenting on content, but she will be looking closely at style and technique and helping students to move their essays forward.
Rebecca continues:
“I would like to help relieve students of any writing anxiety they may be experiencing. I will not be their tutor but the dynamic will be a confidential and unique one. I hope students will make the most of my presence at Lucy Cavendish, to come and talk about their academic writing in a relaxed and comfortable space.”
Watch Rebecca's performance of her poem After Zika, with an introduction by her Connections partner Dr Nicola Rose
About Rebecca Goss
Rebecca is a poet, tutor and mentor, living in Suffolk. Her pamphlet ‘Keeping Houston Time’, came out in 1997 with Slow Dancer Press. Her first full-length collection The Anatomy of Structures was published by Flambard Press in 2010. Her second collection, Her Birth, about the death of her young daughter Ella from a rare heart condition, was published in 2013 by Carcanet/Northern House. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection, won the Poetry category in the East Anglian Book Awards 2013, and in 2015 was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Portico Prize for Literature. In 2014, she was selected for The Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets.
Carousel, her collaboration with the photographer Chris Routledge was published in 2018 with Guillemot Press. Her third full-length collection, Girl, is published with Carcanet/Northern House in 2019.
Rebecca studied English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University, then went on to complete an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. In 2019 she gained a PhD by Publication from the University of East Anglia. She was Creative Writing Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University 2018-19.
Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, anthologies and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Arts online. You can read a ‘critical perspective’ of her work at British Council Literature http://literature.britishcouncil.org/rebecca-goss and listen to me read my poems at The Poetry Archive