Jack Reid

Jack Reid is a PhD candidate at the School of English, Irish, & Communication. His research interests include Contemporary Irish Poetry, Queer Theory, Environmental Humanities, Memory Studies.

Project Title 

Representations of the Pastoral Mode in Queer Irish Poetry.

Project Description 

My research examines representations of the pastoral mode in queer Irish poetry. It considers how the work of Mary Montague, Colette Bryce, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, and Seán Hewitt negotiates the growing assimilation of queer communities into contemporary Irish society by exposing the violent histories embedded in rural Irish landscapes. They reveal how Ireland’s regulation of gender and sexuality interacts with both its colonial past and the escalating climate crisis.

Supervisors 

Dr Yianna Liatsos and Professor Emeritus Margaret Harper

Publications  

• ‘Elegies for a changing land: how Ireland’s poets are responding to the climate crisis’ - The Conversation UK.
• ‘Mary Dorcey: queer Irish poet illuminates a form of sexuality even the law has overlooked’ - The Conversation UK.

Presentations 

• ‘For woods are forms of grief’: Seán Hewitt’s Pastoral Elegies, International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, Pázmány Péter Catholic University (PPCU) Budapest, July 2026.
• Becoming Wild in Queer Irish Poetry - Higher Seminary in English (Guest Researcher), Uppsala University, April 2026.
• Wildness, Loss, and Death in Queer Irish Poetry - English Lunchtime Research Seminar, University of Limerick, October 2025. 
• Making Oddkin: Encountering the Wolf in Mary Montague’s Sensuous Poesis - International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, University of Galway, July 2025.

Professional Memberships 

• International Association for the Study of Irish Literature. 
• Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK and Ireland).

Project Funding

Plassey Campus Centre Scholarship Programme