Professor Rory Waterman’s Inaugural Lecture

Overview

In this lecture, Professor Waterman draws on his work in literary recovery research, folklore studies, and creative writing, to explore the origins of the folk tale that has given its name to the hamlet of Byard’s Leap in Lincolnshire. Where did the tale come from? How might it have been altered through the impacts of historical events, migrations, and social contagions? Why does it endure? How has it influenced other localised variations on a common theme? And what might it be able to tell us about how communities see themselves?

Biography

Rory Waterman joined NTU as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing in 2012, after completing his PhD in late twentieth-century British poetry at the University of Leicester. He is a specialist in contemporary poetry, creative writing and publishing, aspects of literary recovery research from the late nineteenth century to the present, and, latterly, folklore studies, with a focus on Lincolnshire. His four collections of poetry, all published by Carcanet Press, are: Tonight the Summer’s Over (2013), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for a Seamus Heaney Award; Sarajevo Roses (2017), shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize; Sweet Nothings (2020); and Come Here to This Gate (2024), a book of the month on BBC Poetry Xtra, which was described in the Guardian as ‘a wise and deeply satisfying collection’. He has also published three critical monographs, most recently Wendy Cope (2021), and has edited several anthologies and volumes of essays, including W. H Davies, Essays on the Super-tramp Poet (2021) and, with Anna Milon, Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined (2025). He co-edits the poetry pamphlet publisher New Walk Editions. In 2020-21, he co-led the UKRI project ‘Poets Respond to Covid-19’, which included a globally popular website for poetic responses to the unfolding pandemic, and a global anthology of poetry collaborations between leading practitioners and translators. In 2024 and 2025, he led the project ‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’, funded through an AHRC Research Development and Engagement Fellowship. In addition to his academic work, he writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, PN Review, and many other publications, and a selection of his reviews and articles on literary culture was published in his book Endless Present: Selected Articles, Reviews and Dispatches, 2010-2023. His next book, due later this spring, is Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in England’s Forgotten County.

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