Write off the map

EDIT: THIS WEBSITE IS NO LONGER IN USE. For up-to-date contact details, research, and projects, including films, musical collaborations, the Leverhulme fellowship, and work at the Centre for the GeoHumanities, RHUL, please see www.amycutler.net.

Amy Cutler (see School of English staff page) is a writer, curator, and artist, and was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds in the Environmental Humanities research strand. She studied for her PhD (on environmental history, historical geography, and modern British poetry) in the Social and Cultural Geography department at Royal Holloway, University of London as part of the Landscape Surgery research group, and previously received her BA and MSt in English Literature at Wadham College, Oxford. She founded the cultural geography themed cinema PASSENGERFILMS, and has twice in a row received the national award from the British Federation of Film Societies for her work film programming alongside talks on academic research. In June 2013 she curated the exhibition Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig, on forests, history, social memory, and environmental memory. Her first chapbook is Nostalgia Forest (Oystercatcher Press, 2013), and her most recently exhibited work was at GV Art Gallery in the exhibition Nature Reserves. She also runs Land Diagrams. Since 2012 she has been an appointed National Ambassador for Public Engagement with higher education research, and was recently selected for AHRC Science in Culture‘s shortlist of fifteen early career researchers in the UK doing inspiring work in arts-science collaboration.

More information on publications, other writing, and talks:

 

Academic Publications

Amy Cutler, ‘Coastal Camaraderie and British Writing’, in James Riding and Martin Jones eds., Reanimating Region: 11 Ethnographic Explorations (London: Routledge, 2016)

Amy Cutler ed., Were X A Tree: Glosses on Larkin (New York: Punctum Books, 2015)

Amy Cutler and Alex Latter eds., Peter Riley: Critical Essays (Canterbury: Gylphi Ltd: Arts and Humanities, 2014)

Amy Cutler, ‘Land Diagrams: the new twinned studies’, Cultural Geographies January 2013, vol. 20 no. 1 113-122 

Amy Cutler, ‘‘A local habitation and a name’: Writing Britain‘, Journal of Historical Geography January 2013, vol. 39 125-134

Amy Cutler, ‘‘Whitby is a statement’: Littoral geographies in British Poetry’, in Neal Alexander & David Cooper eds., Poetry & Geography: Space, Place & Post-War Poetry (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013)

 

Poetry

Nostalgia Forest (Oystercatcher Press, 2013)

SUCKERS (chapbook, 2012, featured here as part of the Lex-ICON text and image project, and printed in series in Dandelion’s Literary Ecology issue).

Other poems are available from publishers and journals including English, Infinite Editions, Intercapillary Space, Renscombe Press, Nine Arches Press, eMigrating Landscapes, The Clearing, Philosophy Activism Nature (PAN) and Corbel Stone Press (forthcoming). The most recently available online are: Rumpele Stilt / Chanson / L’Hiver

 

Awards

British Federation of Film Societies (BFFS) NATIONAL WINNER in Film Society of the Year Awards for ‘Best Film Education Programme’ second year running – Sept 2013

British Federation of Film Societies (BFFS) NATIONAL WINNER in the Film Society of the Year Awards, for ‘Best Film Education Programme’, Sept 2012, profiled here on the Royal Holloway website.

British Federation of Film Societies Commendation for PASSENGERFILMS for ‘Best Film Education Programme’, 2011

Winner of 1k Royal Holloway Entrepreneurs mini-grant for PASSENGERFILMS, 2011

Co-creator of film Exploring London’s Olympic Waterscape, produced for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad with an awarded 2k Olympic grant, plus collaborative article published on British Library website here, 2010

Holder of full AHRC award for PhD research in Cultural Geography and one other discipline, Royal Holloway, 2009-2012

Holder of the Senior Scholarship Award for outstanding academic achievement, Wadham College, 2008-9

Winner of the Rex Warner Literary Prize for outstanding creative writing and translation, 2007

 

Selected talks

Creative Writing Reading Series, University of Kent, 11th February 2015

Reading Poetry Festival, University of Reading, 7-9th November 2014

Camaradefest, Rich Mix, London, 25th October 2014

Guest Lecture, School of Design, University of Leeds, 22nd October 2014

Polyproject 6, the Literary Kitchen Festival (hosted by the Poetics Research Centre), Peckham Pelican, London, 21st June 2014‘‘Mouth to mackerel’: rituals of language at the coastline’, Crossing the Line: Ritual and Superstition at Sea Roundtable, SS Great Britain, Great Western Dockyard, Bristol, 12th June 2014‘Translating ice: 20th century glossaries and Arctic nature’, The Postcolonial Arctic, University of Leeds, 30th-31st May 2014

‘The logos industry: forest, glossaries, and modern British writing’, Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature Research Seminar, English Faculty Board Room, Cambridge University, 20th May 2014

”A culture is no greater than its woods’: forests and cultural values’, Cultural Values? workshop, University of Leeds, 15th May 2014

”It is a traffick / and no mistake’: the modern business of the sea in British poetry’, British Waters and Beyond: The Cultural Significance of the Sea since 1800, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 12th May 2014

”Lexicographical winter wonderland’: glossaries of ice and snow’, in the panel ‘Eco-translation’, Framing Nature: Signs, Stories, and Ecologies of Meaning, University of Tartu, Estonia, 29th April – 3rd May 2014

Gilbert Adair, Amy Cutler, and Robert Kiely, Xing the Line reading series, The Apple Tree, London, 28th March 2014

‘Curating Forests: Social and Environmental Memory’, AHRC Science in Culture IGNITE 2014, Natural History Museum, London, 26th March, 2014

‘Location Composite #6’, collaborative site specific composition with Andy Spragg, Chris McCabe, James Saunders, and musicians, Centre for Creative Collaboration, London, 6th March 2014

‘The Coast is Our Masterpiece’, an evening of twilight talks as part of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts’ Art and the Sea programme, Sheringham Little Theatre, Norfolk, 30th Oct 2013

‘Working with cultural geographies of the coast and forest’, as part of the Poetics Research Centre evening seminar series on practice-based research, Centre for Creative Collaboration, London, 16th Oct 2013

‘Bow down’, with Amy Cutler, Alec Finlay, and Hanna Tuulikki, at Duke’s Wood, Nottinghamshire, 31st Aug 2013

‘The Archive and the Forest’, at Report on the Archive, Birkbeck, University of London, 5th July 2013

‘Shifting Forests’, at  Land Shift (an evening exploring shifting landscapes and alternative geographies), Two Degrees festival, Toynbee Studios, London, 20th June 2013

”Ax(e) / cuts / of  the / paper’: Anthony Barnett’s A Forest Utilization Family and Forest Poems Forest Drawings’, at Poetry and the Dictionary, St. Peter’s College, Oxford, 15th June 2013

‘Technology and ‘Tongues in Trees’:  modern British poetry and late twentieth century forestry’, at Silent Spring: Chemical, Biological and Technological Visions of the Post-1945 Environment, Birkbeck, University of London, 7th June 2013

‘Nostalgia forests: environmental and cultural memory’, at Society, Representation, and Cultural Memory cross-departmental round-table, Windsor Building, Royal Holloway, 3rd June 2013

”Men sign the sea’: modern poetry on Britain’s North Sea coasts’, at Excavations and Estuaries: The Nature of Landscape exhibition seminar, Abbey Walk Gallery, Grimsby, 25th May 2013

‘‘Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig’: poetry, memory, and modern British forests’, at Shifting Territories: Modern and Contemporary Poetics of Place, Senate House, University of London, 22-23^rd May 2013

‘Forest Memory’: Amy Cutler and Douglas White at Salon Particulier arts club, Union Chapel, Islington, London, 10th April 2013

”Sung through the forest mirror’: the forest echo and non-singular language’, at Writing Sound symposium, Oxford Brookes University, 7^th Nov 2012

”Time spirals out of seed’: the forest, dendrochronology, and modern British poetry’, at Composting Culture: Literature, Nature, Popular Culture, Science, University of Worcester, 5-7^th Sept 2012

”It is a traffick / and no mistake’: ships, economics, and the language of the sea in modern British poetry’, at Britain and the Sea: The Maritime Sphere and the Past, Present and Future of the UK, University of Plymouth, 4-5^th Sept 2012

‘A new word view: geography and the challenge of poetry’, in ‘Interdisciplinary geographies’ panel, RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2012, Edinburgh, 3-5^th July 2012

‘Remit and rhyme: land ownership in contemporary British poetry’, Politics at Royal Holloway one-day conference, RHUL, 31^st May 2012

‘The station and the port: coastal passages’, at Over the Irish Sea: Symposium, University College Dublin, 26-27^th April 2012

‘Treed to a wild junction’: forest intersections in modern British poetry’, Intersections: UCL Graduate Conference, London, 9^th March 2012

”L/andedness ends’: British Poetry and Coastal Politics’, talk given as part of Intercapillary Places event You are outside, lost somewhere: Cutler & Fox, Parasol Unit, 15^th September 2011

‘Peter Larkin’s Leaves of Field and British forest management’, Cultivation Field Postgraduate Symposium, Reading University, 28^th September 2011

‘Contemporary British Poetry and Coastlines’, RHUL Geography Postgraduate Symposium, 21^st September 2011

Panel guest on ‘I Want to Start a Film Club’, part of the Scala Forever season at the Roxy Bar & Screen, 3^rd September 2011

Panel guest on ‘Zombie Zero Apocalypse’, a critical dissection of the geography of zombies, 7-8pm on Resonance FM, 21^st April 2011

‘Poetics of the peninsular in Peter Riley’s Llyn Writings‘, paper given at Regional Literary Cultures Conference, University of Nottingham, 14-15^th April 2011

‘Everything You Wanted To Know About Zombies But Were Afraid To Ask Daniel Defoe’, paper for one-off event on plague narratives at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, 8^th April 2011

‘28 Days Later and the New Mobilities Paradigm’, paper given at Sights and Sites: Topographical Approaches to British Cinema, Queen Mary University of London, 2^nd April 2011

‘Littoral and literal: capes, coasts, and British poetry’, paper given at British and Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference, Queens University Belfast, 15-17^th September 2010

‘Allen Fisher and Brixton Fractals’, at the UCL Urban Laboratory Stadtkolloquium, 28-29^thJanuary 2010

‘Write off the map: modern British poetry and the Ordnance Survey’, paper given at The Drawn Map, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, 12-13^th March 2010

‘Contemporary Cartographic Poetry’, paper given at the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre, Birkbeck, as part of the TALKSTALKSTALKS series, 10^th Feb 2010

‘The landscape is riddled with failed promises / and premature returns’: industrial remains in Ted Hughes’ Remains of Elmet (1979) and Peter Riley’s Tracks and Mineshafts (1983)’, paper given at ‘Reanimating Industrial Spaces’ session, Theories of Archaeology Group (TAG) annual conference, Durham, 17-19^th December 2009.

‘Novel geographies of The Great North Road in C. E. Montague’s Right Off the Map (1927)  and Elizabeth Bowen’s To the North (1932)’, at Utopian Spaces of British Literature and Culture, 1890-1945, Oxford, 18^th September 2009

 

Convening

Curator, Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig – an exhibition on forests, social and environmental memory, and concepts of history, 2013

Founder and Director, PASSENGERFILMS, ‘the car crash of geography and cinema’, 2010 onwards. See case study page on the NCCPE website.

Founder and convenor, LAND DIAGRAMS, new cross-disciplinary twinned studies

Convener, ‘In-betweenness: cross-disciplinary research’, Landscape Surgery, Bedford Square, 29^th May 2012

Conference Co-Organiser, ‘Where horizons meet’: a one-day conference on Peter Riley and readings of his work, Birkbeck University, 14^th January 2011. See conference review in the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry.

Convenor, ‘Poetry beyond Ecocritical Narratives’, two panels for Association for Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) post-graduate conference, ‘Emergent Critical Environments: Where Next for Ecology and the Humanities?’, London, 9-10^th September 2011

Special Events Co-Ordinator, UK Green Film Festival, Bermondsey Square, London, 20^th – 22^nd May 2011

Convenor, ‘Geography and Twentieth Century British Poetry’, two panels plus readings by six poets, at RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2010, London, 1-3^rd September 2010 (see session report)