Lauren Pope

Thesis title: Semiotics and Anorexic Minimalism in the Early Poetry of Medbh McGuckian and Louise Gluck

Biography

Background

Lauren Pope is working towards a PhD in Creative Writing with an emphasis on semiotics and anorexic minimalism in the early poetry of Medbh McGuckian and Louise Gluck. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and online publications including Gutter, Magma, The North and The Rialto. She was chosen as one of Eyewear Publishing's Best New British and Irish Poets 2017. Her poetry pamphlet, Announce This, was published by Templar Poetry, and shortlisted for the 2018 Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. Her poem "Meditation V" was Highly Commended in the 2018 Wigtown Poetry Competition.

 

Her pamphlet, Announce This, is concerned with arrival, in every sense of the word, and with the transition from one life stage into the next. The poems celebrate a strong maternal inheritance as the poet aims to define the many aspects of herself in relation to the mother, sister and sister selves throughout the collection. She engages with this otherness through investigations of identity, travel and relocation; the processes of learning as explored through memory; and the ways in which communication falls short. Inspired by a line from a Medbh McGuckian poem, “So few words for so many colours”, the poet engages with the way language fails us by working, cleansing and reworking portraits of the female self into the pamphlet.

 

Originally from Los Angeles, Pope has lived in Scotland for over a decade working for Scottish Ballet and the University of Edinburgh where she runs courses in Creative Writing and British Literature. Occupying the liminal space of resident alien, Pope’s allegiance is split between her homeland and adopted country. This discomfort informs her poetry in that she is always of two minds: pairing poems about Scotland alongside poems set in the Western United States. In doing so, she aims to create a landscape that embraces both locations, as she reflects on her transformation to motherhood in a country that is not her own by birth.

Responsibilities & affiliations

Lauren also runs courses in British and Irish Literature, Creative Writing and Theatre and Performance at the Scottish Universities' International Summer School. http://www.suiss.ed.ac.uk 

 

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