Staff profile

I studied at York (BA) and Oxford (MSt, DPhil). Before arriving at Durham in 2021 I spent nine years lecturing in English at Oriel College and Lincoln College, Oxford.

Research Interests

My research is mainly focused on Irish and American poetry and poetics. My doctoral thesis, and my first monograph project (America and the Irish Poetic Imagination), are concerned with the ways Irish poets have read, thought about and participated in American literary and political culture across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. I am interested in how Irish poetic form, in its evolution and experimentation as well as its engagement with politics and society, has been shaped by real and imagined American environments.

My first book is a scholarly edition of The Letters of Denis Devlin (Cork UP, 2020), and more recent research arising from this project has encompassed modernism and cultural politics in Ireland after independence, and the literary letter. 

Authored book

• The Letters of Denis Devlin
  Bennett, S. (2020). The Letters of Denis Devlin. Cork University Press

Chapter in book

• Between Revivalist Lyric and Irish Modernism
  Bennett, S. (2021). Between Revivalist Lyric and Irish Modernism. In D. Wheatley, & A. Darcy (Eds.), A History of Irish Women's Poetry. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108778596
• America
  Bennett, S. (2021). America. In G. Higgins (Ed.), Seamus Heaney in Context. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316841372
• 'This rough magic': Late Derek Mahon and Late Shakespeare
  Bennett, S. (2018). 'This rough magic': Late Derek Mahon and Late Shakespeare. In N. Taylor-Collins, & S. van der Ziel (Eds.), Shakespeare and Contemporary Irish Literature (99-123). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95924-5_5

Journal Article

• ‘Only he remains’: René Char, Botteghe Oscure, and Postwar Poetic Translation
  Bennett, S. (2024). ‘Only he remains’: René Char, Botteghe Oscure, and Postwar Poetic Translation. Modernist Cultures, 19(2-3), 262-284. https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2024.0430