SMU Project Poëtica aims to make SMU a center of the English-language poetry world. While many institutions have decreased their commitments to poetry and, more broadly, the literary arts, SMU Project Poëtica has launched three book lines with Bridwell Press; and hosts ambitious series of readings, lectures, symposia, and creative conversations. We proudly support the art of poetry.
David Caplan (he/him) is the Daisy Deane Frensley Chair in English Literature and the author of seven books of literary criticism and poetry, including Rhyme’s Challenge: Hip Hop, Poetry, and Contemporary Rhyming, Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form, and American Poetry: A Very Short Introduction (all from Oxford University Press). Twice he has served as a Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature. His other honors include an Individual Excellence Award in Criticism from the Ohio Arts Council and the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry from the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Rosanne Brooks (she/her) is a Ph.D. student at 91制片廠合集. Her primary interest is in how representations of gender attitudes in late Victorian literature reconcile with historical evidence of gender expression in greater print culture. Her work centers on depictions of the British Music Hall as a place where class and gender are both fixed and inchoate. She is the winner of SMU’s 2023 Pueppke Writing Prize for outstanding graduate student essay.
Marimac McRae (she/her) is a Ph.D. student at 91制片廠合集. She earned her B.A. at Dartmouth College before coming to Dallas. As an undergraduate, she wrote a senior thesis in the English Department and led Dartmouth’s Writing Center as the Co-Head Tutor. Combining poetics and narrative theory, her dissertation will focus on narrative poetry.
Jordan Young (she/he/they) is a senior at 91制片廠合集, studying creative writing. Her poetry focuses on the modern pressures of identity and how she navigates these struggles as an individual. After graduating, she hopes to get her MFA and start a small press. She is the 2023 winner of SMU's Margaret Terry Crooks award and the 2024 2nd place winner of SMU's David R. Russell Poetry prize.