I am absolutely thrilled and delighted to do some serious showing off - today my PhD was confirmed. So, I can officially call myself Doctor Noakes.
It's been three years of hard work researching and writing about poetry and the breath. I have written a new book of poems called Sublime Lungs, which explores my asthma, and breath and breathing topics over a wide number of geographies and chronologies. Hopefully it will appear in print in the next couple of years. Publisher willing. Additionally, I have written a full academic thesis looking at the topic through the lens of health humanities and focusing on the work of Charles Olson, Elizabeth Bishop, Elaine Feinstein, and Dannie Abse.
Many thanks are due to my splendid supervisor, Peter Robinson. I can thoroughly recommend Reading University as a great place to undertake a creative writing PhD.
Having started work during the Covid pandemic and spending lockdown days very firmly in front of the computer, I am glad to be able to now lift my head rather proudly into the air of new and exciting poetry things. Watch this space!
My old alma mater is running a Poetry Festival between 5 and 9 June this year at which I will be running a workshop. In advance, there is a special exhibition of poetry books in Reading University library, wherein you will find The Wall Menders - lovely! Go visit if you are in the vicinity.