Sarah Jackson

Nottingham Trent University, English and Creative Writing, Faculty Member

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Dr Sarah Jackson is Associate Professor in Literature at Nottingham Trent University. She specialises in contemporary literature and theory, and is particularly interested in exploring the intersections between creative and critical studies. Her monograph, Tactile Poetics: Touch and Contemporary Writing (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), provides a new critical perspective on the relationship between text and tact in 20th and 21st-century literature and theory. Her poetry collection, Pelt (Bloodaxe, 2012), won the Seamus Heaney Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. A BBC New Generation Thinker, AHRC Leadership Fellow, and NTU VC Outstanding Researcher, Dr Jackson is currently working on a project exploring the relationship between telephony and literature. See www.sarahjacksonbluebox.com for more information and for further publications.

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Papers by Sarah Jackson

Expeausition

Touch and Contemporary Writing, 2015

So Close : Writing That Touches

New Writing, 2012

In a culture pervaded by a ‘law of tact’ (Derrida, 2005: 66), this paper presents a theory of ‘ta... more In a culture pervaded by a ‘law of tact’ (Derrida, 2005: 66), this paper presents a theory of ‘tactile poetics’ – writing that touches. Reading So Close (2009) by Hélène Cixous, I consider the reciprocal relationship between touch and feeling and the ways that writing can perform contact. Outlining the history of touch and its relationship to language, the essay

Introduction: ‘Who Could Ever Read This?’

Parallax, 2019

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A Conversion Disorder

Interrogating the relationship between reading, writing and ‘conversion disorder’, this creative-... more Interrogating the relationship between reading, writing and ‘conversion disorder’, this creative-critical essay explores the eversion of the glove in the work of Woolf, Genet, Freud and Derrida. Gathering together reflections on gloves and glove anaesthesia, doubles and pairs, and flowers and the death knell (glas), it offers a series of literary, philosophical and psychoanalytic conversions in order to return to and rethink the question of ‘disorder’.

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Dis-tanz: 29 Tangos

Written in 29 tangos, this paper explores the poem’s negotiation between proximity and distance, ... more Written in 29 tangos, this paper explores the poem’s negotiation between proximity and distance, between touching and not-touching. It takes as its starting point Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, tendering the intimate dis-tanz at the heart of the tango, and at the heart of Derrida’s poetics.

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Touching Freud's Dog

“Do not touch me”, Frau Emmy warns Freud in 1889. “Do not touch”, Freud echoes in 1933. This time... more “Do not touch me”, Frau Emmy warns Freud in 1889. “Do not touch”, Freud echoes in 1933. This time, he is referring to his pet chow, Yofi, warning H.D. that “she snaps – she is very difficult with strangers”. Examining the prohibition in light of work by Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, this article charts the withdrawal that always interrupts touch. Despite Freud’s taboo, however, H.D.’s writing seeks to make contact in strange and unnerving ways. Developing Julia Kristeva’s account of the semiotic, this paper proposes a literature of touch. Reading H.D.’s poems, alongside Tribute to Freud, and her letters, the author demonstrates that H.D.s poetics are always haunted by the very (im)possibility of contact.

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So Close: Writing that Touches

In a culture pervaded by a ‘law of tact’ (Derrida 2005: 66), this paper presents a theory of ‘tac... more In a culture pervaded by a ‘law of tact’ (Derrida 2005: 66), this paper presents a theory of ‘tactile poetics’ – writing that touches. Reading So Close (2009) by Hélène Cixous, I consider the reciprocal relationship between touch and feeling and the ways that writing can perform contact. Outlining the history of touch and its relationship to language, the essay examines the literary texture of Cixous’s poetics, drawing on theoretical work by Renu Bora and Jacques Derrida in order to formulate a theory of writing that ‘in its essence touches upon the body’ (Nancy 2008a: 11). Suggesting ways in which writing can touch without tampering, I invite you to open up your own poetics to new textures of writing.

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Expeausition

Touch and Contemporary Writing, 2015

So Close : Writing That Touches

New Writing, 2012