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Dr Simon Perril

Job: Professor of Poetic Practice

Faculty: Arts, Design and Humanities

School/department: School of Humanities

Address: Âéw¶¹´«Ã½, The Gateway, Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116 207 8818

E: sperril@dmu.ac.uk

 

Personal profile

Professor Simon Perril is a poet, critic, collagist, and director of Leicester Centre for Creative Writing at Âéw¶¹´«Ã½.  The Centre has its own website here: https://leicestercentreforcreativewriting.our.dmu.ac.uk/; and a youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVXjbjG2tMwIn2dP1qVwFdw

Simon's poetry publications include Two Duets with Occasion (forthcoming Shearsman 2024), The Slip (Shearsman 2020), In the Final Year of My 40s (Shearsman 2017), Beneath (Shearsman 2015), Archilochus on the Moon (Shearsman 2013), Nitrate (Salt 2010), Hearing is Itself Suddenly a Kind Of Singing (Salt 2004); the chapbooks Newton’s Splinter (Open House 2012), A Clutch of Odes (Oystercatcher 2009); and appearances in the anthologies Sea Pie: A Shearsman Anthology of Oystercatcher Poetry (Shearsman 2012), Gathered Here Today (Knives forks and spoons press 2012), and New Tonal Language (Reality Street Editions 1999).  His poems have featured in leading journals including Shuddhashar FreeVoice, PN Review, Poetry Wales, Jacket, Tears in the Fence, Blackbox Manifold, Angel Exhaust, Fragmente, Salt, Jacket, The Gig, Shearsman, Pages, CCCP, Pilot, Hearing Voices, Cleaves. He has also been translated into Dutch by Stanza: Internationale Pöezie.

Current Project He is currently inside a large poetry project entitled The Diver’s Manual, which will consist of a triptych of poetry collections. The project is highly interdisciplinary, blending art history, philosophy, Occult ‘science’, and the history of Marseille’s significance as the only port in the ‘free zone’ of Occupied France – an escape route for some of the most influential artists and intelligentsia of the Twentieth Century. This historical moment of refugees, ideas and exiles interests me for the oblique light it sheds on our own time. The first volume in the triptych is ‘Sun  Deck  Set  Cogitation’ – and is gathered in Simon’s latest poetry collection Two Duets with Occasion.

You can see excerpts from 'Sun  Deck  Set  Cogitation', and a poetics essay outlining his relationship to Surrealism, here:

Shuddhashar FreeVoice 37, 2024  https://shuddhashar.com/good-to-think-with-my-surrealism/

Blackbox Manifold 27, 2022  Blackbox Manifold - Simon Perril (sheffield.ac.uk)

Long Poem Magazine 29, 2022 (print journal)

He likes long projects: you can find a review of his Archilochus trilogy here:

http://longpoemmagazine.org.uk/reviews/simon-perril-three-collections-from-shearsman-books-archilochus-on-the-moon-2013-beneath-a-nekyiad-2015-the-slip-2020/

You can watch his inaugural professorial lecture here, containing three poetry film pieces (including an early section from Sun Deck  Set  Cogitation, and a launch of the the final volume of his Archilochus trilogy, The Slip):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJoI30MzLGs

As a critic he has written widely on contemporary poetry, specialising in Late Modernist, ‘Linguistically Innovative’ or Anglo-American vanguard poetry and poetics. He has editing the books The Salt Companion to John James (Salt 2010), and Tending the Vortex: The Works of Brian Catling (CCCP 2001). He has contributed to many critical anthologies such The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry 1945-2010 (Cambridge University Press 2015), and Modernist Legacies: Trends and Faultlines in British Poetry Today (Palgrave 2015); and many book chapters and refereed journal articles on poets such as Tom Raworth, Anna Mendelssohn, Peter Riley, Andrea Brady, John Tranter and Peter Manson.

You can watch him reading at London’s Xing the Line poetry series on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7mFpV-4Cbs and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ypN-Vie5s4&feature=relmfu ; and reading in Leicester here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVV1x6u2rmM&t=13s

Simon has appeared regularly on BBC Radio Leicester, reading his work, being interviewed, and talking about National Poetry Day, and World Poetry Day, and the States of Independence publishers’ fair co-organised by De Montfort’s Leicester Centre for Creative Writing and industry partner Dahlia Books. For more information on States of Independence, visit the website: https://leicestercentreforcreativewriting.our.dmu.ac.uk/states-of-independence/

Simon is particularly interested in formal innovation in all aspects of Creative Writing practice, and currently first supervising 5 practice-based PhD students, and second supervising a further 5. They are  working in diverse forms and projects, including

- a multi-platform creative experiment examining the ‘Millennial’ generation

- a memoir that challenges standard representation of visual impairment and mental health

- a novel interrogating the New Weird genre and its potential for socio-political critique

- worldbuilding and neurodiversity

- a collection of short stories and visual collage interrogating the treatment of animals and their relationship to Net Zero

Recent Creative Writing PhD completions include

 - a novel exploring the painter Turner and the little known story of his mother

 - a ‘speculative biography’ of the 90s Indie music scene

- a ‘queer’ exploration of migrant identity and autobiography

Publications and outputs


  • dc.title: A Tour of the Palace of Calculation: Some Laboratory Notes on ‘45 Days in the Company of Robert Walser’ dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: This essay contextualizes my poetry sequence ‘45 Days in the Company of Robert Walser’, that appears in full in my book Two Duets with Occasion (Shearsman 2024). It discusses my use of Walser’s novel Jakob Von Gunten (sometimes published, and filmed as, Institute Benjamenta), and Melville’s short story ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’. It also engages with ideas from Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, and Jung’s writings on Alchemy and Psychology.

  • dc.title: Poems from '45 Days in the Company of Robert Walser' dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: These are five poems from a longer work in progress. 45 Days in the Company of Robert finds renewed relevance in the work of Austrian nascent Modernist novelist Robert Walser in the context of Mark Fisher’s account of the effects ‘Capitalist Realism’ (2009) has had upon work, culture and education. It pays particular attention to Walser’s novel 1909 novel Jakob Von Gunten, a pioneering absurdist work exploring a school for servants.

  • dc.title: Two Duets with Occasion dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: Perril’s new collection Two Duets with Occasion gathers two discrete works. ‘45 Days in the Company of Robert Walser’ turns to the Swiss modernist as guide to the inner workings of educational workplaces, and the lived experience of them. Alchemy, according to Jung, was a quest for individuation. Inhabiting Walser’s pioneering absurdist work exploring a school for servants, Perril finds alarming parallels between the transformative ‘suffering’ of metals in their journey to a higher state, and contemporary workplace rhetorics of self-development and transformation. Sun Deck Set Cogitation collapses the boundaries between reading and writing by playing with two texts by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The first is a forensically detailed moment by moment account of a sunset written in 1935 while en route from Marseilles to Brazil; the second his account of a 1941 voyage escaping occupied France alongside fellow refugee André Breton. As Perril explains, ‘I inhabited Lévi-Strauss’s text like it was a ship’s deck I was walking across or around.’ The poet takes impetus from an early epiphany Lévi-Strauss had looking at the formal intricacy and structural play of dandelion seed heads that give rise to other forms. His poetic ‘treatment’ of the source texts scatter and recombine word-seeds in surprising combinations: blowing on a seed-head and spreading palimpsestic filaments.

  • dc.title: Filaments and Phases dc.contributor.author: Young, John; Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: 'Filaments and Phases' is a setting of a section of Simon Perril's poem 'Sun Deck Set Cogitation'. Perril's poem is derived from two texts by Claude Lévi-Strauss (description of a sunset written in 1935 while en route from Marseilles to Brazil and another written on the 1941 voyage on which he escaped occupied France) through a process of textual erasure in which new text is created by selective scanning of an initial one. Perril's recorded reading of 'Deck One' from 'Sun Deck Set Cogitation' is subject to a similar treatment in 'concrete' sonic form, perforated and reconstituted within an immersive framework of digitally synthesised and processed sound forms. 'Filaments and Phases' was first performed at the Electroacoustic Spring 2023 Festival in Rethymno, Crete.

  • dc.title: Excerpt from Sun Deck Set Cogitation, Promenade 3 dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: This is a further excerpt from my book-length poem-in-progress Sun Set Deck Cogitation. Each of the six ‘decks’, or 'promenades', in the poem differently negotiates the text of a notebook entry description of a sunset the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss made from the deck of a ship. This excerpt is from ‘Promenade Deck 3'. There is an accompanying essay listed separately in the repository.

  • dc.title: Excerpt from Sun Deck Set Cogitation: Promenade, Deck 3 dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: This is a further excerpt from my book-length poem-in-progress Sun Deck Set Cogitation. Each of the six ‘decks,’ or ‘promenades’, in the poem differently negotiates the text of a notebook entry description of a sunset the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss made from the deck of a ship. This excerpt is from ‘promenade: deck 3.’ There is an accompanying essay listed separately in the repository.

  • dc.title: 'Good to Think With’: My Surrealism dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: This essay gives an account of my writing, and visual, practice's relationship to Surrealism. It offers a contextualized discussion of the research areas my long poem Sun Deck Set Cogitation is informed by; and situates it within a larger poetry ongoing poetry project called 'The Diver's Manual.' The essay revisits surrealism within the context of practice research, and discusses the complex relationship anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss had to Andre Breton as fellow exiles leaving occupied France. It also discusses my visual collage practice, and contains a brief account of how Sun Deck Set Cogitation has also become an installation collaboration with composer John Young.

  • dc.title: Three Visual Collages dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: These three collages are taken from two projects. 'The Idea of Cinema in the Mind of a Painting' was made to accompany my book 'Nitrate', a book of poems concerning the emergence of cinema as an accidental by-product of scientific research into how to capture motion. The other two images are taken from my ongoing 'collage novel' called 'Under Austerity Rubble, Ancient Bird Folk Laid Future Eggs.'

  • dc.title: Five poems from '45 Days in the Company of Robert Walser' dc.contributor.author: Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: These are five poems from a longer work in progress. '45 Days in the Company of Robert Walser' finds renewed relevance in the work of Austrian nascent Modernist novelist Robert Walser in the context of Mark Fisher’s account of the effects ‘Capitalist Realism’ (2009) has had upon work, culture and education. It pays particular attention to Walser’s novel 1909 novel Jakob Von Gunten, a pioneering absurdist work exploring a school for servants.

  • dc.title: Sun Deck Set Cogitation (audio installation: Historic Dockyard Chatham version) dc.contributor.author: Young, John; Perril, S. D. dc.description.abstract: Sun Deck Set Cogitation is a setting of the first set (‘deck one’) of Simon Perril’s poem of the same name which is derived from the contents of two texts by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss—a highly detailed and densely descriptive moment by moment account of a sunset written in 1935 while en route from Marseilles to Brazil and another written on the 1941 voyage on which he escaped occupied France. Furthermore, Perril’s compositional approach takes impetus from an epiphany Lévi-Strauss had early in his career looking at the formal intricacy and structural play of dandelion seed heads that give rise to other forms. Perril’s poetic ‘treatment’ of the source texts scatter and recombine word-seeds in surprising combinations: blowing on a seed-head and spreading palimpsestic filaments. This process is further reflected in Young’s acousmatic ‘treatment’ of Perril’s reading, extracting and processing vocal fragments and working these into a new palimpsest of textual material and digital sound design. The Historic Dockyard Chatham version of this work was created as a prototype for the final Phoenix Leicester version [https://hdl.handle.net/2086/22848] It consists of a single variation on Perril’s reading of 'deck one' realised spatially on the Game of Life 192-loudspeaker wave field synthesis system in the A+E Lab Central Boiler House Chatham Historic Dockyard Chatham, as part of the University of Kent‘s ‘Sonic Cartography: soundscape, simulation and re-enactment’ conference, 28-30 October 2022. dc.description: The Historic Dockyard Chatham version of this work was created as a prototype for the final Phoenix Leicester version [https://hdl.handle.net/2086/22848].

Key research outputs

Two Duets with Occasion (forthcoming Shearsman 2024)

' "Good to Think with": My Surrealism', Shuddhashar FreeVoice 37, 2024

‘On Metis: Or, What the Fox and Octopus taught me about Practice Research’. Writing in Practice. 7, 2021, pp. 178-190. 

The Slip (Shearsman, 2020)

Beneath: a Nekyiad (Shearsman, 2015)

“High Late-Modernists or Post-Modernists? Vanguard and Linguistically Innovative British Poetries since 1960”, The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry, 1945-2010 ed. Edward Larissey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp.82-99

‘“Kinked up like it wants to bark”: Contemporary British Poetry at the tomb of the Poète Maudit’ in Modernist Legacies: Trends and Faultlines in British Poetry Today ed. David Nowell-Smith, Abigail Lang. New York/Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 pp.95-109

‘Thinking technologies: poetry and collage as vehicles for speculative thought’ Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Vol.39 no.1, March 2014, 83-94.

Archilochus on the Moon (Shearsman, 2013)

Newton’s Splinter (Open House 2012)

Nitrate (Salt 2010)

The Salt Companion to John James (Salt 2010)

A Clutch of Odes (Oystercatcher 2009)

Hearing is Itself Suddenly a Kind Of Singing (Salt 2004)

Research interests/expertise

Dr Perril’s research expertise lies in Creative Writing, practice research, and contemporary Anglo-American poetry and poetics  - with particular leanings towards the ‘experimental’ (Modernism, Avant-Garde, Postmodernism, Surrealism, Linguistically Innovative, Late Modernist, British Poetry Revival). He has a visual practice in collage and poetry films.

Areas of teaching

Creative Writing, Uncreative Writing, Articulating Practice, PhD supervision

Qualifications

  • Phd in Contemporary Poetry, Cambridge University, 
  • MA in American Literature, Leeds University
  • BA Hons in English Literature, Anglia Ruskin University

Âéw¶¹´«Ã½ taught

On the undergraduate Creative Writing BA (Hons) degree, Simon teaches Uncreative Writing. Simon is MA Creative Writing Programme Leader, and teaches Articulating Practice and Devloping your Project, and the supervises MA Dissertations. He is currently first supervising 5 PhD students, and second supervising 5. 

Membership of professional associations and societies

National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE)

ALCS 

Forthcoming events

Poetry reading for Centre for Poetry and Poetics, University of Sheffield, 24th April 2024

Poetry reading for Xing the Line,Hoxton Cabin, 132 Kingsland Rd, London E2 8DP May 12th 2024

‘Sitting for the Occasion of a New Thing: a duet between poetry and painting’, a paper to be given at the 27th annual international Great Writing creative writing conference, University of London Saturday 13th – Sunday 14th July

Conference attendance

Conference Papers

‘Recalibrating the Dandelion’: a Deck Poetics Examining Exile, Levi-Strauss, and Surrealism’ Contemporary Innovative Poetry Research Seminar, at the London Institute of English Studies, November 29th 2023.

‘A fantastical Journey to the Antipathies: Poetry, alchemy, and the Octopus’ British Science Festival, Sept 16th 2022

Perril (in collaboration with composer Prof. John Young) Sun Deck Set Cogitation: a Multi-Media Installation, Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester, March 1st -3rd 2023

Perril (in collaboration with composer Prof. John Young) ‘Artist's Talk on Sun Deck Set Cogitation Installation, March 2022

Perril (in collaboration with composer Prof. John Young) Sun Deck Set Cogitation: an Acousmatic Setting Sonic Cartography: Soundscape, Simulation and Re-enactment, Chatham Historic Dockyard, Kent, 29th-30th October 2022.

‘Metis, multimodality, and the craftiness of craft’, (paper within a panel onMultimodal Writing Practice: on resilience, cross-pollination, and playful opportunity) NAWE Conference Thurs 10th March 2022.

‘Synaptic Foliage: an evening of Poetry films, collage, and a book launch’:  Inaugural Professorial lecture/performance, online Jan 27th, 2021.

‘Of Lightness, Words … and Cutting the Heads Off Birds’, Richard III Visitor’s Centre, Leicester, 2018.

‘Ledges and Edges: Unlearning Reflection’ for Edge Poetics: a Symposium on Innovative and Speculative writing Practices in Higher Education. University of Bedfordshire, 4th November 2017

Excavating and Occupying Lyric’,Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference 2016 (Imperial College London, Sat. June 18th - Sun. June 19th 2016

“Science, Poetry and Creative Writing in Nitrate: an Essay on Cinema”, The Nawe Conference, Bristol, 14-16 November, 2014.

 “Countering Fantesectomy: an account of a collage novel in progress” Word into Image symposium 10th July 2014, The Tactic Gallery, Cork, Ireland.

“Grasping a Nettle Tongue, Or: Why I put Archilochus on the Moon, and what he did there” At The Expanded Lyric conference, Queen’s University, Belfast – 3 & 4 April 2014.

“The Idea of cinema in the mind of a painting”: poetry, film, collage’ Talk at The ICA, London, June 19th 2014.

“Synaptic foliage: Notes towards a poetics of collage as conductive practice (the dialogue between poems and visual collage)”.  At the Writing into Art conference, University of Strathclyde and  Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow, June 18th-19th 2013.

“Thinking technologies: poetry and collage as vehicles for speculative thought” British Society for Literature and Science Conference , Cardiff University and University of Glamorgan, 12-13 April 2013.

Nitrate: creative practice as research”, Canadian Creative Writers & Writing Programs conference, “Creative Writing in the 21st Century”, Thursday May 10th — Sunday May 13th 2012, Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Toronto.

“‘the words you can & do remember / by the hand to write / defy the night’: John James and the resistance to gravity”. Birkbeck Centre for Poetics Research, Keynes Library, London WC1, 9th March 2012.
 ‘“Kinked up like it wants to bark”: Contemporary British Poetry at the tomb of the Poète Maudit’. Paper given at the International conference Legacies of Modernism: The State of British Poetry Today, 9-11th June 2011, Université Paris-Diderot, Institut Charles V, 10, rue Charles V, 75004 Paris.
“Treasure Islands: Douglas Oliver, Hannah Arendt and the Pathos of Novelty” paper given at Variations on the Theme of Harm: A One-Day Conference on the Work of Douglas Oliver,  Dept of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies and the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, December 5th 2009.
“Up the Northampton NILE - Paddle Provided (demonstration of the Northampton Integrated Learning Environment)” with Dr Ruth Robbins. Given at the Studying Poetry conference November 28th 2003, University of Hertfordshire, De Havilland Campus, Hatfield 
“One’s Regard Per Se: Leslie Scalapino’s Moebius Comic Strip” Given at Postmodern Poetry: An International Conference 30-31 March 1998, Exmouth Campus, University of Plymouth. July 1998.
 “Being Apprehended, Being Overlooked: Barbara Guest’s Fair Realism” Given at "Something We Have That They Don’t”: Post-War Anglo-American Poetic Relations conference held at Centre For English Studies, University of London, July 1998.
“Hanging on Your Every Word: J.H.Prynne’s Bands Around The Throat” Given at The Works of J.H. Prynne: A One Day Colloquium December 15th 1998, English Faculty, Cambridge University.
Poetry And Artificial Intelligence”, given at the Assembling Alternatives international poetry conference / Festival held at the University of New Hampshire, U.S.A. 29 August - 2 September 1996.
“Response And Responsibility In J.H. Prynne’s Word Order”, given at the Identity And Community In Contemporary British Poetry conference held at the Centre For English Studies, University Of London. September 1 1996.
“Tom Raworth’s Eternal Sections and Recent Debates Concerning The Politics Of signification”, given at the Twentieth-century Graduate Research seminar, English Faculty, Cambridge. March 11 1995 .
“J.H. Prynne’s The Oval Window”, given at the Twentieth-century Graduate Research seminar, English Faculty, Cambridge. May 1994.

April 24 1993 : “A Reading Of Brian Catling’s The Stumbling Block”, given at The Third Cambridge Conference Of Contemporary Poetry, Kings College May 1993.

Selected Poetry Readings / Public Performances (since joining Âéw¶¹´«Ã½)

Remembering the Logoclast - Alan Halsey. Centre for Poetry and Poetic, Sheffield University, 4th May 2023

‘A fantastical Journey to the Antipathies: Poetry, alchemy, and the Octopus’ British Science Festival, Sept 16th 2022

  • Poetry reading at the xing the Line series, The Apple Tree, London WC1X 0AE, 20th April 2012
  • Invited to give a talk on John James, and then an evening poetry reading, at The Birkbeck Centre for Poetics Research, Keynes Library, London WC1, 9th March 2012.
  • Reading with visuals at Sussex Poetry Festival, Nightingale Theatre, Brighton, July 1st, 2011
  • Featured poet at Shindig! Reading series, The Western, Leicester, 27th June 2011
  • Invited to talk on my book Nitrate at Open Meeting of the Poetry and Poetics Research Group, Edge Hill University, 11th November, 2010.
  • Reading to launch the first issue of Cleaves magazine at the Turkey Café, Leicester, March 2010
  • An installation of an audio-visual version of my book of poems Nitrate, was screened on a loop all night at the Phoenix digital Arts Center, Leicester for the Cpulse Launch event 29th January 2010. I also gave a live poetry reading.
  • Reading at the States of Independence Independent Publishers Fair that the Creative Writing team co-hosted with Five Leaves Press, March 2010 – and which drew in 500 visitors, and was successful enough for Derby to use our model for a similar event themselves.
  • Launch reading for Nitrate as part of Salt Poetry Night at Cultural eXchanges alongside the internationally respected poets Tom Raworth and John James.
  • Reading at Salt Poetry’s 10th Anniversary event, The Punter, Cambridge, 28th January, 2010
  • Clutch of Odes Launch at the Western Pub, Leicester,2009

Current research students


  • Zohre Bhagban (M4C)
  • William Breden, first supervisor
  • Caroline Butterwick (M4C, first supervisor
  • Philip Dobson, first supervisor
  • Rod Maude, first supervisor
  • James Chantry, second supervisor
  • Joe Gardner, second supervisor
  • Rosina Georgiou, second supervisor
  • Charlene Lee, second supervisor
  • Megan Lupton, second supervisor

Externally funded research grants information

  • £2,500 funding from the Henry Moore Foundation, January 2001 (towards the completion of Tending the Vortex: The Works of Brian Catling).
  • JISC TechDis: Undergraduate Creative Writing and E-inclusivity 
    Total:  £ 2010 (Commissioned July 2008; interim report written in January 2009; final report submitted in May 2009).

Internally funded research project information

  • Research into Teaching 2007-2008: Journeying Beyond the Page: New Media and undergraduate Creative Writing. Total: £3000.
  • Research Into Teaching 2008-2009: Towards Creative Design: Total: £3, 243.00.
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