Biography

As a current PhD student at the University of Leeds, I work on other projects around my research. I am always interested in hearing about opportunities to perform, collaborate on research projects, to teach and to create educational resources. You can email me at sarah at sarah-dawson dot co dot uk, or use the contact form on my About page.

Publications

27/10/23: Three poems and a video from Physical Culture were published on the Pamenar Press website

18/03/23: ‘Physical Culture 12’ and ‘Physical Culture 13’ were published in the anthology Pertinent Actions.

08/09/21: A video of my performance Catastrophising was published by the Babel Tower Notice Board.

01/09/21: My video poem Exercise 3 was published on Permeable Barrier.

19/04/21: An interview and two of my sound poems were published as a podcast by Babel Parish Radio.

22/01/21: Two visual poems titled ‘present for my brother’ published by the Babel Tower Notice Board.

01/07/20: My debut artist’s book, expecting a different result, was published by HVTN’s Interruptions imprint.

01/12/19: Documentation of my performance ‘event score for the poem with a scale ratio of 1:1’ was included in Emergency INDEX Vol. 8.

08/10/19: A poem and a drawing from expecting a different result published in issue 72 of The Interpreter’s House.

22/09/19: Three visual poems from expecting a different result published in Datableed issue 12.

23/05/19: Extracts from expecting a different result published by Burning House Press, as part of their Incompleteness issue

18/12/18: Three visual poems published in HVTN 4.2

24/11/18: Three visual poems and accompanying prose poems published in para-text 6 under the heading ‘WEAK KNOTS’. 

06/10/18: My photo/text work ‘Tasks for the embodied’ was published in the Sidekick Books anthology No, Robot, No.

25/04/18: A photo/text version of my performance ‘Ways of Holding’ was published in HVTN 4.1

08/04/18: My visual poetry sequence ‘grass/fur’ was published in Datableed issue 9

Performances

View a YouTube playlist of my performances

14/10/23: Performed Catastrophising at Ilkley Literature Festival. 

11/05/23: Performed a collaboration with Yasmin Hafedh at the European Poetry Festival, Liverpool.

05/04/23: Read Physical Culture poems at More Song.

18/03/23: Reading of edited Physical Culture poems at the launch of Pertinent Actions anthology.

27/01/23: Performed ‘I saw a bird’ at Hard Work at the Hundred Years Gallery.

07/07/22: Performed collaboration with Michael Sutton at the European Poetry Festival, York. 

19/03/22: Performed Physical Culture at the Runnymede International Literature Festival.

29/08/21: Performed Catastrophising at Live from Babel Tower

22/07/21: Performed Vocal Self-Awareness Exercise at the One-Off Indie Poetry Press Festival.

07/03/21: Performed two poems written in the International Phonetic Alphabet at the Leeds Lit Fest Salon, organised by Clare Fisher as part of the Leeds Literature Festival.

10/08/19: Performed ‘To make the audience laugh’ at Theatre of Failure V, the LGBTQ poetry event series I organised with J. D. Howse.

04/07/19: Displayed artworks from expecting a different result at the eighth Devil’s Dyke Night, at Lighthouse in Brighton, and performed a poem from the same project. 

15/11/18: Performed a collaboration with J.D. Howse at Theatre of Failure III.

10/11/18: Performed ‘I will meet you at the place where I was previously’ at Poem Brut 9, at the Rich Mix 

09/08/18: Performed ‘event score for the poem with a scale ratio of 1:1’ at Theatre of Failure II. 

22/05/18: Performed ‘Some possible blessings’ at Fathom Books, HVTN & Friends at the Peckham Pelican. 

22/03/18: Performed ‘failed séance’ at a Poem Brut event at Kingston University. 

07/12/17: Performed ‘Ways of Holding’ at a Writer’s Centre Kingston event. 

Teaching Experience

Spring and Autumn 2023: The Brilliant Club: Inside the Poem Factory: How does the making of a poem affect its meaning?

Designed and delivered a seven-week course with baseline and final assessments for KS4 students. The course covered key compositional processes used by contemporary poets, including found text, handwritten and typewriter poetry, chance procedures and the use of AI writing. The seminars included creative and critical tasks, enabling students to analyse these genres of poetry from the perspective of the author and the reader. I have taught this course twice in secondary schools in the Leeds area.

5th October 2022: The University of Leeds: Collaborative Poetry Workshop

Workshop to welcome new PhD students to the School of English. Enabled all participants to generate a poem in one hour, even if they had not written poetry before. Described as ‘engaging’ and ‘interactive’ by participants. 

Autumn 2021 and Autumn 2022: The University of Leeds: Foundations of English Studies.

Planned and delivered seminars covering key theoretical issues in the study of Literature, such as the formation of the cannon, and how to approach textual variants. Marked two assignments each term, assessing my students’ close reading skills and understanding of the theoretical texts we had covered.

Autumn 2021: The Henry Moore Institute

Devised educational resources for the exhibition Slip by Julia Crabtree and William Evans. I wrote the text for a booklet that took gallery visitors though the process of composing a visual poem inspired by the exhibition. I also assisted in delivery a CPD event for local teachers, talking about the history of visual poetry and how they might incorporate it into their teaching. 

Event Organisation

October 2022: Co-organised Poetry in Abundance, an open-mic poetry event for all students and staff at the University of Leeds. The event was opened by the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. 

April 2021: Co-organised These Events, Events Make, Ruptures: A Performative Lecture and Q&A with Nathan Walker, alongside my colleague Jon Gilbert, as part of CePRA’s “Practice Online” Speaker Series.

From 2018-2019, I co-organised the LGBTQ experimental poetry event Theatre of Failure, alongside the poet J.D. Howse. We organised six events with twenty-nine poets, and created a video archive that has received a total of over 850 views. My role included researching and contacting poets to perform at the event, maintaining a website and social media, filming the events and editing videos. 

Group Exhibitions

20/01/20 – 22/02/20: Four visual poems based on stains found in my flat were included in the exhibition Temporary Spaces at the Poetry Café. A catalogue of this exhibition was published by Pamenar Press.

11/06/19 – 23/08/19: My visual poetry series WEAK KNOTS, published in para-text, was included in the exhibition Poetry by Design at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, the public art gallery of the University of Leeds. 

21/02/19 – 05/03/19: ‘Instruct – Act – Attempt’, a collaborative installation made with Astra Papachristodoulou, was included in the group exhibition PHOETRY & PHOTOLIT at the Museum of Futures. The installation allowed visitors to compare strips of negatives with the poems the photos had been inspired by.

22/02/2018 – 19/03/18: My visual poem ‘Traced Copy of my Payslip’ was exhibited in Scribbling and Scrawling, an exhibition of visual poetry at the Museum of Futures in Surbiton. 

23/02/17 – 12/03/17: My collage ‘Development at 90 Brighton Road’ was included in the Museum of Futures Visual Poetry Exhibition.

Qualifications

Royal Holloway University of London MA Creative Writing, (Poetic Practice pathway)

Pass with Merit. Awarded 1st November 2017

I completed my dissertation on speechlessness in the work of the writer and performance artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Other critical work reflected on how Dom Sylvester Houédard’s typestracts might be listened to or performed, and how the linguistic theories of Roman Jakobson could be applied to Caroline Bergvall’s Drift.

The Open University BA (Hons) in Literature

First-class Honours. Awarded 31st July 2012