Jo Clement

• English Literature, Language, and Linguistics, Newcastle University
• Email: j.clement@newcastle.ac.uk

Moveable Type is a poetry collection and critical study. Led by an ekphrastic methodology the thesis identifies, examines and responds to the peripherality of Travellers in the ethnocentric Western imagination. Writing as a member of this minority ethnic group I examine a hitherto unexplored Traveller presence in Thomas Bewick’s tail-piece prints to interrogate critically and imaginatively how ideological perceptions about Traveller identity manifest in the visual and print cultures of settled peoples as misrepresentation, obscuration and silencing. In both the poetry collection and accompanying critical prose, the thesis interrogates Bewick’s tail-pieces to address Traveller disengagement with the academy, publishing industry and archive as institutions possessed by settled peoples. The investigation recovers alternative discourses that illuminate the cultural significance of the ‘unlettered and peripatetic’ Traveller. Ekphrasis means ‘out’ and ‘speak’. Moveable Type’s printed and auditory materials together ‘speak out’ against immoveable ideologies about Travellers prevalent today.

www.joanneclement.blogspot.com/

Supervisory Team: Prof. Sean O’Brien, Creative Writing (Newcastle), Prof. Bill Herbert, Creative Writing (Newcastle).

Start Date: September 2014