Dr Simon Workman

Programme Director English & History & Lecturer in English

Biography

Dr Simon Workman is the Programme Director for the B.A. (Honours) in English & History and lectures across several different modules of English Literature at Carlow College including: Introduction to Literary Forms, Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, Creative Writing, 19th Century American Writing, Victorian Poetry and Postmodern Fiction. He recently co-organised a conference at Carlow College and VISUAL entitled ‘Encircling Worlds: Imagining Irish Suburbia’. As part of the conference he spoke to the RTE Book Show, which is accessible [here].

Research Interest

Dr Workman’s research interests include: British and Irish radio drama, Irish modernist writing, suburban Irish culture and literature, and contemporary British and Irish poetry.

Publications

Books:

  • Imagining Irish Suburbia in Literature and Culture. Eoghan Smith and Simon Workman, eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 (forthcoming).

Peer-Review Articles:

  • Ideal Homes and Haunted Houses: 21st Century Irish Suburban Art and Culture’ in Creativity From ‘Suburban Nowheres’: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Ilja Van Damme, Ruth McManus, and Michiel Dehaene (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2022)
  • ‘From Chimera to Catastrophe: Speculative Urbanization and Contemporary Irish Culture’,  Éire-Ireland, (Vol. 56): 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2021, pp. 266-296.
  • ‘There Are Darker Kingdoms: Mapping Modernity in Kevin Barry’s Short Fiction’ in the Journal of the Short Story in English, 73 (Autumn, 2019), pp. 241 – 261.
  •  ‘Maeve Kelly: Women, Ireland, and the Aesthetics of Radical Writing’, Irish University Review 49.2 (2019): 304–321
  • ‘An Ancient Celtic world had filled the air”: the Celtic turn in Louis MacNeice’s midcentury radio writing’, Irish Studies Review 25.2., (2017) Pp 357-371.

Book Chapters:

  • ‘Imagining Irish Suburbia’ (with Eoghan Smith), Imagining Irish Suburbia in Literature and Culture, Eoghan Smith and Simon Workman, eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
    (forthcoming).
  • ‘A Life of One’s own’, Introduction, Maeve Kelly, Orange Horses (Dublin: Tramp Press, 2016)
  • “Poised on the edge of absence”: Kavanagh and MacNeice in the shadows of War’ in Irish culture and wartime Europe, 1938–48, ed. by Dorothea Depner & Guy Woodward, (Dublin:
    Four Courts Press, 2015)
  • “To be Tired of this is to Tire of Life”: Louis MacNeice’s London’ in Irish Writing London: Volume 1 Revival to the Second World War ed. by Tom Herron (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)
  • “Of them but not of them”: MacNeice and the Thirties poets.’ in Voicing Dissent: New Voices in Irish Criticism, ed. by Sandrine Brisset and Dr. Noreen Doody (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012)

Invited Essays

  • ‘Maeve Kelly: fighting for women and writing about them’, Irish Times 15th November, 2016
  • ‘Pure Sound’, Poetry Ireland Review (93), 2008.

Reviews:

  • Tom Walker, Louis MacNeice and the Irish Poetry of His Time’ The Review of English Studies, Advanced Access published March 31, 2016, doi:10.1093/res/hgw037
  • ‘David Fitzpatrick,’Solitary and Wild”: Frederick MacNeice and the Salvation of Ireland’. Irish Literary Supplement 32.2 (2013), 12-13
  • Selected Letters of Louis MacNeice ed. Johnathan Allison’ Irish Literary Supplement 32.1

Selected Conference Presentations:

  • “You’re a nice little thing, even if you are Irish”: Maeve Kelly, constructions of Irish identity and migrant female experience in Post-War Britain.’ Conflict, Migration & Identity in Modern Ireland: Global and transnational perspectives (2016), Trinity College, Dublin, VISUAL Centre & Carlow College.
  • ‘Valerie Anex, “Ghost Estates”’ Encircling Worlds: Imagining Irish Suburbia (2014), Conference, Carlow College and VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art .
  • “Poised on the edge of absence”: Place and placelessness in the poetry of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh’ Writing Home: Irish culture and wartime Europe 1938-48 (2013) Trinity College, Dublin.
  • “This chain of simple notes”: Louis MacNeice, Radio, Poetry and the Auditory Imagination’ Louis MacNeice, Radio Writer and Producer (2013), Oxford University.
  • ‘Beckett and Radio’, Explaining Beckett (2013), Carlow Public Library.
  • ‘A mint of golden intonations’: Louis MacNeice and the BBC, Voices in the Ether (2012), Royal Irish Academy.
  • “Speaking of lost illusions”: MacNeice, London and the Second World War’. Literary London Conference (2009). Queen Mary, University of London.
  • “Not matching pictures but inventing sound”, MacNeice and the Auditory Imagination.’ Louis MacNeice Centenary Conference (2007) Queens University, Belfast.

Conferences Organised

  • ‘Conflict, Migration and Identity: Global and Transnational Perspectives’ (2016), TCD, Carlow College and VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow
  • ‘Encircling Worlds: Imagining Irish Suburbia’ (2014). Carlow College and VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow (Co-organiser)

Media Work

  • Contribution to discussion on the writing of Maeve Kelly, RTE Bookshow, 5th November 2016. http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-book-show/programmes/2016/1105/829440-thebook-show-saturday-5-november-2016/?clipid=2324432
  • Contribution to programme on Irish Suburbia, RTE Bookshow, 25th October 2014.
    http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-book-show/programmes/2014/1024/654626-the-bookshow-saturday-25th-october-2014/?clipid=1714057

Qualifications

B.A., Ph.D. (Trinity College Dublin)