Liam Bates

Liam Bates

X (Twitter): @liambatespoet
Instagram: @liambatespoet
Email: Liam.bates1@btinternet.com
Website: www.liambatespoet.com

Thesis Title

My Other Friend: An Ecopoetic Exploration of Friendship’s Potential in the More-than-human City

Institution

Manchester Metropolitan University

Supervisors

Professor Andrew McMillan
Dr David Cooper
Professor Paul Farley (Lancaster University)

Research Summary

My research will explore how friendship functions in the ‘more-than-human’ city, focusing on the city of Manchester. It examines how poetic practice – the writing of poetry and its critical and cultural contextualisation – can contribute to a framework of ‘environmental friendship’ in the context of climate crisis. By engaging with interdisciplinary work from the fields of cultural geography, anthropology, sociology, politics, and literary theory (particularly ecocriticism/ecopoetics), this research explores the potential consequences of different friendships in the more-than-human city, and friendship’s role in producing ecologically sustainable futures.

Research Interests

Ecopoetry, More-than-Human Studies, Friendship, Ecocriticism, Environmental Writing, Place Writing

Publications

Books:
Human Townsperson (Broken Sleep Books, 2022)

Pamphlets:
Monomaniac (Broken Sleep Books, 2021)
Working Animals (Broken Sleep Books, 2020)

Essays and other prose articles:
Oliver, Catherine and Bates, Liam (2023) Paradise 2.0 : John Madin is Haunting Birmingham. Lo Squaderno. pp. 29-31. ISSN 1973-9141
Oliver, Catherine and Bates, Liam (2022) A Fable for the End of the World. you are here : the journal of creative geography.

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