I'm a writer, a poet and occasional performer of poetry and other things. 

I'm particularly interested in the different ways we experience the written and the spoken word, and in the relationships between text and voice, page and body. So poetry and poetic language make a good field of enquiry. 

I ran the Poetry and Memory Project at the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, where I taught on Children's Literature and Creativity courses. I'm a Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, where I previously held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College.

My focus currently is writing a book about the value of knowing poetry by heart: weaving findings and stories from the Poetry and Memory Project with the history, philosophy and the science of memorisation and performance.  I'm still interested in hearing from anyone who has learned  poetry, either as a child or as an adult. If you'd would like to tell me about your experience, I'd love to hear from you.  

I came late to the academic venture, via a masters degree in Children's Literature, another in Educational Research, and then a PhD on orality and children's poetry. Previously, I was a freelance editor and writer, before which I'd spent several years as an in-house editor in educational publishing.

One of the most satisfying things in life is working on a poem. Last year I wrote and illustrated a book of poems in celebration of orchards, and I am now working on another collection. My poetry and other non-academic work appears under the name of Whitton Spriggs.