Dr Duncan MacKay

About

1996 PhD Astrophysics (Electronic Engineering, University of Kent)

1996-2001: Research Fellow, Unit for Space Sciences & Astrophysics, Electronic Engineering Laboratories, University of Kent.

2018 PhD Poetry: Practice as Research (School of English, University of Kent).

2014-present Honorary Senior Research Fellow (Centre for Astrophysics & Planetary Science, University of Kent).

Research interests

My continuing focus is on cross-disciplinary work within Arts and Science faculties at UKC. This follows from the interdepartmental links nurtured during 2011 when I held a Leverhulme award as Writer & Artist in Residence at CAPS. Work with the Centre for Modern Poetry research group in the School of English explores the links between contemporary poetics and linguistics.

Innovative poetics assume the right of experiment and inquiry familiar to science, pushing at the boundaries of conceptual and aesthetic possibility. My research has explored the late work of American poet George Oppen in relation to issues within contemporary cognition studies. I have written widely on the scientific influences on Pound, Eliot, Stein, Olson, Duncan, Cage, Snyder, Forrest-Thomson, Prynne, Hejinian and Fisher.

The influence of the cognitive sciences (particularly linguistics, psychology, and the neurosciences) on creative practice is shared in the work both of CAPS and the School of English. Regular seminar contributions have introduced CAPS members to questions of epistemology and ontology as they impact scientific understanding and communication.

Publications

Roko Papers (Muscaliet Press, in press 2024)

Case Studies in Star Formation: A Molecular Astronomy Perspective (University of Cambridge Press, 2023). Co-authors: Mark Thompson & James Urquhart.

Astropoetics 2: Still in the Snug. PN Review vol. 272 (2023)

Preface Prelim Proem Preamble (Litmus Publishing, 2022)

Differentials (Muscaliet Press, 2021)

[Happenstance] (Muscaliet Press, 2020)

The Quarantine Notebooks (Muscaliet Press online, 2020)

Open & Active Uncertainty: J.H. Prynne’s Kazoo Dreamboats and the physics of an indeterminate reality. Journal of Literature and Science vol 12, no. 1 (2019) 59-76.

The Cat in the Basket: Ezra Pound’s Fragments. PN Review vol. 248 (2019)

Eleanor Perry’s Pataquerical Imagination. Tears in the Fence vol. 70 (2019)

Footnotes (Litmus Publishing, 2019)

If the Means are Equal: Charles Olson’s Reciprocal Exchange, PN Review vol. 241 (2018) 41-44.

Open & Active Uncertainty in J.H. Prynne’s Kazoo Dreamboats, Tears in the Fence vol. 65 (Spring 2017) 144-152.

E.E.Cummings in Paris, Tears in the Fence vol. 64 (Autumn 2016) 160-165.

Eliot’s Scientific Tendencies in 1919, PN Review vol. 230 (July-August 2016) 25-28.

Briefly Speaking (Wandering Scholars, 2015)

Hematopoiesis, Litmus 3 (August 2015) 52-3.

The Net & the Fish: An Introduction to Philosophical & Aesthetic Influences on Chinese Painting, Poetry & Calligraphy (Black Gable Press, 2015)

Back of the Envelope and File:/present crisis/. Zone2 (2014).

Astropoetics from the Snug, PN Review vol. 214 (2013) 7-9.

Astropoetics (Black Gable Press, 2012).