Welcome
The study of English at the University of St Andrews has a long and distinguished history that is sustained in the scholarly, critical, and creative dynamism of today's School of English.
In the present day, the School enjoys an international reputation as a centre for both academic research and literary creativity. Amongst UK institutions, the School of English has recently been ranked 1st in the Guardian University Guide and 2nd in the Complete University Guide.
The School's richest inheritance, however, is its collegiality: we pride ourselves on our friendliness, and on our common enthusiasm for great literature.
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REF 2014: UK Research Excellence Framework 2014 Results
The School of English has been ranked third in the UK, and first in Scotland, in the most recent league table of research intensive departments (2014). With over 90% of our staff submitted, 86% of our research has been rated world leading and internationally excellent. In the previous research assessment exercise (2008) we were also ranked in the top ten, making the School one of the UK's consistently outstanding research departments.
New poetry collection from Dr Oli Hazzard
Dr Oli Hazzard's new poetry collection Blotter consists of five sequences, each constructed using a different process. In 'Graig Syfyrddin' notes on hillwalking in the Welsh marches – Oli's former home – alternate with found text taken from an online walking forum. 'Blotter' is a shepherd's calendar of sonnets composed of Russian spambot script – a mix of lifestyle advice, gaming tips, authoritarian propaganda, bucolic fragments and apocalyptic messages. 'Within Habit' is a series of prose poems collaged from numerous sources. 'March and May' comprises parallel columns of verse. 'Or As' is a family of 81 seventeen-syllable poems, each one an erasure of the corresponding page in a different book the poet was writing alongside Blotter. The poems are preoccupied, above all, with the passage of time, and how that passage can be differently registered or disturbed: the working day, the distorted seasons, the timestamp of a text message, the jottings of a daybook, the formal structure of a shepherd’s calendar, the double exposure of a photograph, the reverse-flow of a Twitter feed. The title, 'Blotter', connects these concerns, suggesting at once a police blotter, a journal, a thing for drying wet spots, and, in its painterly connotation, a way of rendering the world in a manner that is vague, blurred, or out of focus.
