The CounterText interview : Rod Mengham

Abstract

Rod Mengham's involvement with literature is as broad as it is deep. He is a poet, an essayist, a translator, he runs the small press Equipage, and he is Reader in Modern English Literature at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is the author of poetry collections such as Unsung: New and Selected Poems (Salt, 2001), Parleys and Skirmishes (Ars Cameralis, 2007), Chance of a Storm (Carcanet, 2015), Grimspound and Inhabiting Art (which also contains essays; Carcanet, 2018), and 2019 a vase in pieces (Oystercatcher, 2019). As an academic his research interests focus on Charles Dickens, the literature of the 1930s and 1940s, modernism, and contemporary fiction and poetry, and he has published extensively on these topics. He also has a keen interest in contemporary art, which has found expression not only in numerous critical art essays, but also through his work as a curator, both freelance and in his capacity in that role at Jesus College.