Re-launch of the Centre for Poetic Innovation Readings to mark the new collaboration between the Schools of English and Modern Languages

These poetry readings mark the new collaboration between the School of English and Modern Languages. This event will feature three poets, awarded-winning Karen Solie, who teaches creative writing at St Andrews, and Peter Mackay and Dr Oli Hazzard, Senior Lecturers in the School of English.

Karen Solie is the author of six collections of poetry, and the recipient of awards including the Griffin Prize, the Latner Poetry Prize, a Canada Council Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award, a Chalmers Fellowship, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. A volume of selected poems, The Living Option, was published in the UK in 2013. The Caiplie Caves (2019) was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and the Derek Walcott Prize. Her most recent book, Wellwater (2025), has recently been awarded the Forward Prize for Best Collection and is shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Originally from rural southwest Saskatchewan, Karen teaches creative writing half-time at the University of St Andrews.

Peter Mackay is a poet, broadcaster, translator and lecturer. He has two collections of poetry with Acair, Galore (2015) and Some Kind of (2020), and a pamphlet, From another island (2010), with Clutag Press. Originally from the Isle of Lewis, he lives in Edinburgh and is a Senior Lecturer in the University's School of English. In 2024 he was appointed Scottish Makar.

Another Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Dr Oli Hazzard is the author of three books of poems, including Sleepers Awake (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), and a novel, Lorem Ipsum (Prototype, 2021). He lives in Glasgow.