Ross Hair

Prior to joining UEA in 2011, I was a lecturer in English Literature at the University Portsmouth.  My research has been concerned primarily with North American and British literature and culture with focus on: modern and contemporary poetry; small press publishing; and the intersections between literature, music, and visual art.

These interests have informed my monographs which include 0 to 9 and the New York Avant-Garde: Publishing by Numbers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025); Brilliant Absence: Pursuing the Kingfisher in the work of Hans Waanders (Uniformbooks, 2019); Avant-Folk: Small Press Poetry Networks from 1950 to the Present (Liverpool University Press, 2016); and Ronald Johnson’s Modernist Collage Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). I've also co-edited Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music: America Changed Through Music (Routledge, 2016) and Minting the Sun: A New Selection of Ted Walker’s Poetry (Chichester University, 2010).

My research has been also published in numerous journals including Contemporary Literature, Modernism/modernity, and Textual Practice.

My poetry has appeared in a number of poetry British and North American magazines such as Shearsman, LVNG, and The Cultural Society  and my pamphlet, An Anthology Gathered for Shirley Collins, was published by Longhouse Publishers in 2012.

My forthcoming book Control Theory (University of New Mexico Press) explores the Apollonian and Dionysian tensions in postwar art, music, and poetry. It examines how control and rationality—manifested in serial music, constructive art, and concrete poetry—fostered a formalist “new lyrical involvement” shaped by cybernetics, systems theory, and structuralism. This constructive aesthetic, Control Theory argues, not only tempered the  chance and indeterminacy championed (via Erik Satie) by John Cage and Fluxus, but also underpins the dynamic interplay of order, change, and chance in British systems music and the work of Lily Greenham.

2018 - 2023: Course Director (Department of American Studies)

2014 - 2018: Research / Unit of Assessment Coordinator (American Studies)

2012 - 2014: Course Director (American Literature with Creative Writing)

2013 - 2014: Senior Advisor (American Studies)

2011 - 2013: Plagiarism Officer