Contact
Biography
I am an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Literary Creativity, Community, and Place research centre in the School of English. Before taking up my post at Nottingham in 2016, I taught English Literature and Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow. I obtained my PhD in English Literature (with a dissertation on 1960s Scottish poetry magazines) from University of Edinburgh, a MLitt in Scottish Literature from University of Aberdeen, and a BA in English from Vassar College (US).
My full-length poetry publications include Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water (Prototype, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and recommended by the Poetry Book Society, and Urn & Drum (Shearsman, 2018). My poetry pamphlet publications include Foggy Eyes (Earthbound Press, 2022), Light Hazzles (Essence Press, 2022), Soft Troika (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2016) and Allegories from my Kitchen (Sad Press, 2015). For more information about my work, please see my website.
Alongside my poetry writing, I publish creative-critical writing and occasional criticism, and regularly perform my poetry in the UK and abroad. I create experimental music and poetry in the band Food People.
Expertise Summary
The main areas of my research and teaching are in creative writing and twentieth and twenty-first British and American poetry, with a focus on the modernist and contemporary period. I am particularly interested in experimental forms of production and performance of creative writing, and the points of contact, historical and potential, between literary practice, visual arts, and music.
My poetry, short stories, literary essays, and criticism have been published in journals and anthologies. I have performed at national and international literary festivals, and have given lectures at numerous public insitutions such as Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Little Sparta garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Nottingham Contemporary. I am a member of the Critical Poetics interdisciplinary research group.
Literary Events and Outreach Initiatives
I am committed to connecting the practice and study of creative writing to wider research culture through innovative research and outreach methods.
I convene the Nottingham Poetry Exchange, a programme of poetry performances, seminars, and reading group sessions. This platform supports a student placement scheme.
I recently worked on a project with BACKLIT gallery and the Environmental Agency to develop a creative writing workshop series on ecopoetry. This was funded by the AHRC Impact Arts Accelerator grant.
In 2021 I co-curated Pommel, an online programme of videos created by artists innovating at the intersection of textual, visual, and sonic performance, held at Nottingham Contemporary.
Other past events I have organised include the conference Modernist Art Writing/ Writing Modernist Art at the University of Nottingham; Women's Poetry Publication Workshop, a series of workshops encouraging women to engage with small press publishing in partnership with Small Press Library in Liverpool and Nottingham Women's Centre; Syndicate, a series of readings, performances, and lectures on the intersection of technology and poetry in collaboration with New Media Scotland; Women Translate Translation, a symposium and poetry night on the theme of women and translation at the Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh; and Outside-In/ Inside-Out, a festival and online resource of 'outside' and 'subterranean' poetics held in Glasgow supported by the AHRC Digital Transformations Fund.
Teaching Summary
I teach topics on poetry, fiction, and contemporary literature. I am teaching on the following courses in the School of English in 2024/25
Undergraduate
Academic Community
Poetry: Forms and Conventions
Dissertation
Postgraduate
Learning to Read: Criticism for Creative Writers
Creative Writing Conventions & Techniques
Writing Poetry (Distance MA)
Dissertation
I am currently supervising a number of PhD students in Creative Writing, ranging from a creative-critical thesis on monstrous motherhood, an experimental midwifery memoir, a poetry collection exploring 'the eerie' and South Nottinghamshire landscape, a poetry collection on women in folklore and myths, and a critical literary thesis on the poetics of walking.
Research Summary
I am currently researching poetry as autography (writing about a self that foregrounds the act of writing in the presentation of that self). Through the writing of my third book, I am exploring the… read more
Recent Publications
MATSUMOTO, LILA, 2020. Four Poems. In: SLEDMERE, MARIA and WILLIAMS, RHIAN, eds., The Weird Folds: Everyday Poems from the Anthropocene Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
MATSUMOTO, LILA, 2019. 'Evening fast out the window', a sequence of 10 poems. In: COOK, RORY, ed., Murmur 1. Monitor Books.
MATSUMOTO, LILA, 2019. In: MISTRETTA, GIUSEPPE, EDWIN STEVENS AND JESSICA HIGGINS, ed., A Plume Annual 2. Museums Press.
Current Research
I am currently researching poetry as autography (writing about a self that foregrounds the act of writing in the presentation of that self). Through the writing of my third book, I am exploring the possibilities of the autographic text as a form and aesthetic that channels the impulses of life writing (to share stories of the self) through the performative gestures and procedures of poetry.
Recent work has been published in The Weird Folds: Everyday Poems from the Anthropocene (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), Poetry London, Murmur (Monitor Books), Plume (Museums Press), The World Speaking Back (Boiler House Press), In Transit (Emma Press), and Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press).
I have a particular interest in collaborating with artists and am currently working on a book project with the design studio OK-RM.
A selection of talks, workshops, and public lectures I have given include:
'Dream Ecologies', a talk and performance with Nisha Ramayya, Natasha Ruwona, and Maria Sledmere, Paisley Book Festival (February 2023)
'Hybrid Poetries', performance and conversation with Caleb Klaces, Elizabeth Reeder, and Amanda Thomson (June 2022)
'Tainted Pastoral - Poets Figuring City', a talk and performance with Vahni Capildeo and Padraig Regan, Belfast Book Festival (June 2022)
'Big Contemplative Utopia: solace and consolation in the writings of Denise Riley, Lisa Robertson, and Lyn Hejinian', Therapy and Experimental Poetry Symposium, Birkbeck, University of London (September 2019)
'Energy Objects In-Conversation: Hannah Imlach, Dr Lila Matsumoto & Dr Alexandra Campbell', a conversation on sculpture, poetry and energy cultures, Peacock Gallery, Aberdeen (July 2019)
'When the Sardine Can Looks Back: the role of material objects in poetics', workshop as part of Critical Poetics Reading Group, Nottingham Trent University (January 2019)
'Objects aren't topid: artwriting and feminist frameworks', University of Westminster School of English guest lecture (December 2018)
'Poetic Technologies: Exploring Hebridean renewable energy production through poetry- sculpture collaboration', Bath Spa University Intercultural Communication through Practice Research Group (November 2017)
'The Stitching of Her Wake: The Collaboration of Pamela Campion and Ian Hamilton Finlay', Little Fields, Long Horizons, Ian Hamilton Finlay Symposium, University of Edinburgh (July 2017)
'Happy Work: Poetics, Women's Labour, and Object oriented ontology', Land/Change Environmental Humanities Festival: Bath Spa University funded by British Academy (February 2017)
Past Research
My past research explored the theme of contingency: the affective state of uncertainty and/or the condition of being subject to chance and change. In my poetry collection Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water and in creative-critical essays, I investigated poetry's various presentations of contingency: as individuated, ordinary-extraordinary moments (expectation, fear, grief, delight for example), as broader cultural milieu (climate crisis, migration), and as resonances of social and environmental inequities.