Erica McAlpine

Erica McAlpine is an Associate Professor in English Language & Literature at the University of Oxford and the A.C. Cooper Fellow and Tutorial Fellow at St Edmund Hall. Her research focuses on lyric poetry from Romanticism to contemporary works, with a particular emphasis on analyzing errors in poems and critics' responses to such mistakes. She teaches 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century literature, specializing in Romantic and American poetry.

Education:

• BA (Harvard University)
• MPhil (University of Cambridge)
• PhD (Yale University)

Research Interests: McAlpine explores how poetic errors (grammatical, factual, or intentional) shape reader interpretations. Her award-winning book The Poet’s Mistake (Princeton, 2020) examines such errors in works by poets like Wordsworth, Browning, and Dickinson. She also investigates intersections between poetry and the unconscious mind, blending literary criticism with theoretical insights.

Publications Overview: Her scholarly articles span journals like European Romantic Review and Essays in Criticism. As a poet, her collections include Small Pointed Things (Carcanet, 2024) and The Country Gambler (Shearsman, 2016), praised for their technical precision and thematic depth.

Academic Engagement: McAlpine co-leads the Salutation and Cat poetry reading group and organizes St Edmund Hall’s Meet the Poet series. She actively bridges academic and creative writing through collaborative events and public lectures.