Megan Hickes

I graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge in 2023, having received the Cambridge Quarterly Prize for my third-year dissertation on Marianne Moore’s syllabic poetry and ancient writing systems.

After taking a year out, I returned to Cambridge to complete my MPhil on Lorine Niedecker’s poetry and phonological recording methods with the support of the Trinity College Gould Studentship. This year, I begin my PhD research on how historical and current understandings of dyslexia resonate with ideas of poetic rhythm and language processing, working towards a neuro-diverse theory of poetics. I am working across neuroscientific and literary understandings of rhythmical language to explore what it means to be ‘out of time’ with words. I am primarily focusing on the work of Gertrude Stein and thinking about how her experimental rhythmic form resonates with inquiries into dyslexia and non-normative language processing.

I am more broadly interested in embodiment, materiality, and the experience of subjectivity as well as the development of lyric theory since the nineteenth century. I find close reading poetry (alone and with others) deeply enjoyable.