Gillian Fielder
Doctoral Student in Creative Writing - Gillian’s thesis is entitled 'Saint Cuthbert and the Anthropocene: A New Opus Geminatum for the 21st Century'
Research Project Title:
Saint Cuthbert and the Anthropocene: A New Opus Geminatum for the 21st Century
Supervisors:
Prof Jake Polley, Prof Sam Turner + Dr Helen Adamson
Contact Details:
Email: g.fielder@newcastle.ac.uk
Research Interests:
- Early medieval Northumbria
- Bede’s Latin poetry
- Old English poetry
- Pilgrimage
- Walking as creative practice
- Landscape history
- The Anthropocene
- Contemporary poetry
A brief outline of my research project:
In the opus geminatum [twinned work] tradition, a prose text and a poetry text address the same subject. Applying the organising principle of the opus geminatum tradition to my doctoral thesis, I will write (1) a long poem based on Bede’s poetic Vita Sancti Cuthberti [Life of Saint Cuthbert] (c.716CE) that explores Cuthbert’s legendary relationship with nature and the environment and (2) an extended essay that is a prose account of walking Saint Cuthbert’s Way (100km) and of the experience of navigating the Anthropocene Northumbrian landscape in the footsteps of a early medieval saint.
Publications:
‘Standing on the Bridge’, Shooter Literary Magazine, Issue 18, Spring/Summer 2024
‘The Spaniel Pup’, The Ekphrastic Review, online, April 2024
‘Bird Song’, Beyond Abstraction: Poems in response to the paintings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Newcastle University, 2023
Old English poetry translations, Between the Lines, Newcastle University and Poetry School, Creative Writing/Writing Poetry MA Anthology, 2023