David’s research concerns modern and contemporary literary responses to the environment, at present focusing on poetic responses to landscape and place. David is interested in the ecopoetic strategies of a range of contemporary UK poets including John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie, Alice Oswald and Robin Robertson.
His research seeks to examine the problematic and multivalent nature of place, and its future. Recent research has concerned the relationship between literature and walking as a creative act, and the ways in which landscape itself might be said to be textual.
He is also engaged in the examination of the upsurge in writing about environment and place within the UK since the millennium which has come to be known as ‘The New Nature Writing.’
David has supervised a range of postgraduate students, with a particular emphasis on students of creative writing whose work focuses on environmental themes.
David is Programme Director of the MLitt Environment, Culture and Communication and is a member of the Solway Centre for Environment and Culture.
Present: Lecturer (Interdisciplinary Studies)
Not available
Borthwick, D. (2015) On walks on various ways: some field notes. Bottle Imp(17),
Borthwick, D. (2012) ‘Driven by loneliness and silence’: John Burnside’s susceptible solitaries. Bottle Imp, 12,
Borthwick, D. (2011) “A green thought in a green shade”: contemporary environmental poetry. Southlight, 9, pp. 15-17.
Borthwick, D. (2011) ‘To comfort me with nothing’: John Burnside’s dissident poetics. Agenda, 44/45(4/1), pp. 91-101.
Borthwick, D. (2011) ‘The tilt from one parish / into another’: Estrangement, Continuity and Connection in the Poetry of John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie and Robin Robertson. Scottish Literary Review, 3(2), pp. 133-148.
