John Dennison
Education and Experience
John Dennison received an MA in English Literature from the University of Otago in 2003, and completed a Bachelor of Theology at Otago in 2005. After working as an archivist, John commenced a PhD at the University of St Andrews. His doctoral thesis is a chronological study of the development of the humanist poetics of Seamus Heaney, entitled 'Seamus Heaney and the Adequacy of Poetry: A Study of his Poetics'. This argues that Heaney's constant preoccupation with the relationship of poetry to a general inimical reality, often identified as 'history', is best explained in terms of his repeated appeals to an idea of poetry's 'adequacy'. In particular, it traces the emergence of the dualistic conceptual structures of Heaney's poetics, and examines the assumptions that underlie that dualism of poetry and history. John is also concerned with the fiduciary commitments of Heaney's high poetics ¿ with describing Heaney's expression of a kind of faith in the good of poetry. At the same time, John argues that the typical yet unacknowledged ambiguity of Heaney's idea of the adequate poem finally points to the strains inherent in the poetics. John welcomes discussion relating to his current research, and to his wider research interests. These include: contemporary poetry in English; New Zealand literature, particularly poetry; literature and theology; literary theory and theology; and manuscript and archive research relating to contemporary poetry.
Publications
'Ko te Pakeha te teina: Baxter's cross-cultural poetry', Journal of New Zealand Literature, 23: 2 (2005), pp. 36-46
'A safe place? Pakeha identity and Christianity', Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, 10.2 (2002), pp. 36-7
'Truth that is shared: James K. Baxter's Cross-Cultural Metaphors and Pakeha Identity', Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, 11.1 (2003), pp. 42-47. Also presented as a paper at the Canterbury-Otago Postgraduate Conference, University of Canterbury, October 2002.
Conference Papers:
'"A momentary stay against confusion": the poem and history in the poetics of Seamus Heaney', a paper presented April 2009 at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, University of St Andrews.
'Personhood and the Trinity: A Critical Exegesis of John Zizioulas' Theological Anthropology.' A paper given at the University of Otago Department of Theology Systematic Theology Seminar, May 2006.
'Cross-Cultural Reciprocity in the Poems of Glenn Colquhoun.' A paper given at Knowledge and Nation: the 32nd Biennial Congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, Victoria University of Wellington, February 2003.
Teaching:
EN1004, Explorers and Revolutionaries - tutor
