For many years now the professional "creative writer" within universities and other institutions has encompassed a range of roles, embracing a plurality of scholarly and creative identities. The often complex relation between those identities forms the broad focus of this book, which also examines various, and variously fraught, dialogues between creative writers, "hybrid" writers and academic colleagues from other subjects within single institutions, and with the public and the media. At the heart of the book is the principle of "creative writing" as a fully-fledged discipline, an important subject for debate at a time when the future of the humanities is in crisis; the contributors, all writers and teachers themselves, provide first-hand views on crucial questions: What are the most fruitful intersections between creative writing and scholarship? What methodological overlaps exist between creative writing and literary studies, and what can each side of the "divide" learn from its counterpart? Equally, from a pedagogical perspective, what kind of writing should be taught to students to ensure that the discipline remains relevant? And is the writing workshop still the best way of teaching creative writing? The essays here tackle these points from a range of perspectives, including close readings, historical contextualisation and theoretical exploration. Professor Richard Marggraf Turley teaches in the Department of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University.BR Contributors: Richard Marggraf Turley, Damian Walford Davies, Philip Gross, Peter Barry, Kevin Mills, Tiffany Atkinson, Robert Sheppard, Deryn Rees-Jones, Zoe Skoulding, Jasmine Donahaye

Paula Rego is an artist of astonishing power with a unique and unforgettable aesthetic. Taking its cues from the artist, this fascinating study invites us to reflect on the complexities of storytelling on which Rego's work draws, emphasizing both the stories the pictures tell, and how it is that they are told. Deryn Rees-Jones sets interpretations of the pictures in the context of Rego's personal and artistic development across sixty years. We see how Rego's art intersects with the work of both the literary and the visual, and come to understand her rich and textured layering of reference: her use of the Old Masters; fiction, fairy tales and poems; the folk traditions of Rego's native Portugal; and her wider engagement with politics, feminism and more. The result is a highly original work that addresses urgent and topical questions of gender, subject and object, self and other.

A murder mystery in verse, this book opens with the protagonist stumbling across the body of an acquaintance who has been horribly murdered and left in a cemetery. She recognizes the victim as the former lover of her husband and so begins a web of incident and intrigue. Combining the pace and excitement of good fiction with all the lyric artistry of verse, the plot unfolds in brief poetic episodes, offering erotic glimpses of the protagonist's volatile moods. Disturbing and contradictory facts emerge as she interacts with police, colleagues, friends, and her spouse, all of whom seem to possess pieces of the puzzle that, when solved, will lead her to the mystery of the murdered girl.

"Modern Women Poets" is the companion anthology to Deryn Rees-Jones's pioneering critical study, "Consorting with Angels: Essays on Modern Women Poets". While its selections illuminate and illustrate her essays, Deryn Rees-Jones's superb anthology works in its own right as the best possible introduction to a whole century of poetry by women. The anthology draws together the work of women poets from Britain, Ireland and America as one version of a history of women's poetic writing, while not isolating women's writing from its intersection with the work of male contemporaries. Tracing an arc from Charlotte Mew to Stevie Smith, from Sylvia Plath to the writing emerging from the Women's Movement, and to the more recent work of Medbh McGuckian, Jo Shapcott and Carol Ann Duffy, the anthology draws together the work of women poets from Britain, Ireland and America as one version of a history of women's poetic writing. It shows important connections between the work of women poets and shows how - throughout past 100 years - they have developed strategies for engaging with a male-dominated tradition. "Modern Women Poets" allows the reader to trace women's negotiations with one another's work, as well as to reflect more generally on the politics of women's engagement with history, nature, politics, motherhood, science, religion, the body, sexuality, identity, death, love, and poetry itself.

Deryn Rees-Jones's new collection won a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. It explores relationships with men and the wider cultural constructions of masculinity In poems such as "Making Out, " and "From His Coy Mistress, " the dilemmas of modern women are confronted with dark humor and sharp technique in a series of blistering narratives, while intensely realized love poems chart the passionate initiation of new relationships. Love, in all its permutations, suffuses the book, and sensuous details abound. Rees-Jones's first collection, The Memory Tray, was shortlisted for a Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection.

Marie Stopes' work in the area of sexual health and contraception has left a lasting legacy, and she is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century. Her Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties was first published in 1918, translated into thirteen languages and sold over a million copies. Stopes also ardently pursued her enthusiasm for literature throughout her life, writing novels, plays and poetry. Her novel Love's Creation, published in 1928, the year women obtained the vote, is a working through of the debates which she addressed both in her personal and public life: sexual relations, the relationship between the arts and sciences, the quest for female sexual fulfillment. Marie Stopes' campaigning on behalf of a more open attitude to women's sexuality, equality in marriage, and sexual health and contraception, and her opening of the first free birth control clinic in the British Empire in 1921, saw her at the centre of political controversy, not least in her battle with the Roman Catholic church. Love's Creation, republished here for the first time since 1928, offers fascinating insights into early twentieth-century women's writing, most notably Virginia Woolf's theories of female creativity / fulfilled female sexuality which is not under threat from motherhood; female economic and psychic freedom; and the social milieu of the time. It is an engaging and fast moving narrative with lively, well-drawn and unconventional characters. The novel poses important questions about women's choices and aspirations before, during and after marriage. Not surprisingly it also engages in still contemporary and vital debates about the relationship between the sciences and the arts, and theories of evolution.

In this pioneering critical study, Deryn Rees-Jones discusses the work of some of the major women poets of the last hundred years, showing how they have explored what it has meant to be a woman poet writing in a male-dominated poetic tradition. Beginning with Edith Sitwell, Stevie Smith, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, she shows how an older generation resisted easy categorisation by forging highly individual aesthetics and self-presentation. For Edith Sitwell, the woman poet was to be 'as eloquent as a peacock'. Stevie Smith compared poetry to 'a strong explosion in the sky' but did not consider gender to be an important factor. Sylvia Plath, who admired the work of both these poets, wanted to write in a way which was 'not quailing and whining' but to produce 'working, sweating, heaving poems born out the way words should be said.' Anne Sexton, in her poem 'Consorting with Angels', writes that she is 'tired of the gender of things' 'not a woman anymore,/ not one thing or the other'. But despite their brilliance, their perceived eccentricity - along with the suicides of Plath and Sexton - made these major figures difficult acts to follow. Deryn Rees-Jones then considers the poetry written in their wake, with essays covering poets such as Moniza Alvi, Carol Ann Duffy, Vicki Feaver, Lavinia Greenlaw, Selima Hill, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, Gwyneth Lewis, Medbh McGuckian, Alice Oswald and Jo Shapcott. While these women all have very different writing styles, Rees-Jones argues that common strategies emerge which link them to their poetic predecessors, showing how they have developed an aesthetic which allows them to explore their femininity. Taking account of the importance to these women of the work of their male contemporaries, her incisive essays open up new perspectives on the poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries. Deryn Rees-Jones's companion anthology Modern Women Poets is published at the same time as Consorting with Angels.

In 2009, Carol Ann Duffy became the first female Poet Laureate to much public acclaim. This study looks at Duffy's work from her early development and involvement with the Liverpool poets in the 1970s, through to her most recent collection. It concentrates on the way in which Duffy develops her use of the dramatic monologue and the love poem and traces her interest in surrealism and a tradition of European modernism. While acknowledging the importance of her popular appeal, the book also makes a case for Duffy as a serious and important poet who engages with key issues of gender and identity in innovative and important ways. Deryn Rees-Jones places Duffy at the forefront of a change in poetry in Britain, and sees her as a writer who both heralds and opens up the way for those writing after her.