Recent Poetry, Essays, PhD & Curation
Some recent work by Nia Davies
BOOKS
My second poetry collection, Votive Mess will be published by Bloodaxe in 2024. All fours (2017) my debut collection was shortlisted for the Roland Matthias Prize for Poetry with Wales Book of the Year (2018) and longlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize for First Collections (2019). Order All fours from the Bloodaxe website: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/all-fours-1151
ESSAYS, ARTICLES, POEMS
“Song-Song Stare”: Maggie O’Sullivan’s Ritual Listening in Poetry and Performance
Peer-revied article in the ESLA – English Studies in Latin America, issue 24 on Performance, January 2023. Drawing from my recent research into ritual and poetry in the field of creative writing, this poetics essay explores performance and ritual in the work of Maggie O’Sullivan. I focus on sound poetry and listening to explore some of O’Sullivan’s ritual techniques of transformation. Link to full article, pdf: https://letras.uc.cl/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/DAVIES_Authorised-by-Author.pdf
Four Poems: Their attire, Anti-poetics – anti-techniques, Theatres of the Mouth, Mother of Oyster
Four new poems for Geraldine Monk in Blackbox Manifold 29, Winter 2022, from the University of Sheffield. These poems will be in my forthcoming collection from Blooodaxe in 2024. Link to poems: https://blackboxmanifold.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/issue-29-current-issue/nia-davies-29
Roads to Rome: Archival Research from Afar
Essay on research in a neglected Fine Arts Archive at the British School Rome
in Cultural Practices, September 2021, Link: https://www.culturalpractice.org/article/roads-to-rome-collaborative-archival-research-from-afar
RESEARCH THESIS
Threshold Moves: A Ritual Poetry Practice
PhD Thesis, 2021, University of Salford. My doctorate research (2017 – 2020) identifies and explores a practice of ritual poetry. Drawing on creative writing and embodied ritual practice, as well as theory from poetry, performance and anthropology, I present new theoretical and practical understandings of a field of ritual poetry. The thesis is driven by and composed of original creative works of ritual poetry in text, performance and poetics. I make a contextual-historical survey and readings of a selection of contemporary poets, particularly the works of Jerome Rothenberg, Maggie O’Sullivan and several other poets who experiment with ritual, as well as performance theorists and practitioners. I form a novel methodology of practice-based research in poetry and poetics. The thesis includes a poetics, a culminating text oriented towards the making of future works of ritual poetry. A copy of the thesis is available on request from University of Salford from the library repository: https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/60371/ https://letras.uc.cl/programas-de-servicio/esla/ I am also currently preparing material arising from this research as book manuscript and further articles for publication.
CURATION AND EDITORIAL
I am currently on the curatorial committee of the Nawr experimental arts live events series in south Wales and the editorial committee of Pamenar press focusing on experimental intercultural poetics.
The issues of Poetry Wales I edited from 2014 – 2019, seventeen issues 50.1 – 55.1 are also available here: https://poetrywales.co.uk/product-category/back-issues/.
Then spree 