Luke Thompson

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College: College of Humanities
Discipline: English
Department: English

My first degree was in philosophy at the University of Wales, Lampeter (2002-6), after which I moved into a remote farmhouse, wrote an awkward novel and worked for an Organic fruit and vegetable wholesaler until I was offered a scholarship to study on the pioneering MA in Writing, Nature and Place at Exeter (2009-10), for which I received a distinction and the Dean's Award. I have recently completed an AHRC-funded PhD on the Cornish poet Jack Clemo’s life and work at Exeter. This is being published in 2016.

Since beginning the PhD, I have enjoyed a good deal of public engagement work, curating exhibitions, running creative writing workshops, jointly organising a conference, producing a documentary film, appearing on BBC and community radio stations, and I have continued to contribute articles, stories and poetry to journals and magazines. In 2016 I helped the organisation of events around the Jack Clemo centenary with the Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival. As well as the AHRC funding, these projects have received support from the Sir Arthur Quiller Couch Memorial Fund, Warwick University’s IAS, the University of Exeter, Falmouth University, Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum, ACE, Literature Works and Imerys.

Publications include a pamphlet of poetry, the clearing (Atlantic Press 2016), a work of creative non-fiction about the night (Little Toller Books 2017) and the editing of Jack Clemo's Selected Poems (Enitharmon 2015). I am also co-editor of The Clearing, an online magazine for writing about landscape, nature and place, and an Associate Lecturer at Falmouth University.