Meg Tyler

Teaching Interests

Lyric Poetry, Creative Writing, Survey of the Humanities: Art and Literature, Ethics

Research Interests

History of Lyric Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Poetry in Translation, Irish Literature, Intersections between Art History and Literature, Art and Ethics

Select Publications

Poetry’s Abracadabra: Essays on the Poetry of Michael Longley, editor, forthcoming from Wake Forest University Press, 2026.

More Feathers in the Lake Than Swans (poetry), Finishing Line Press, 2025.

Poor Earth, a chapbook of poems, New Women’s Voices’ Series, Finishing Line Press, 2014.

A Singing Contest: Conventions of Sound in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Studies in Major Literary Authors Series, Routledge, July 2005.

Co-editor, with Rosanna Warren, of two anthologies of prison poetry writing, Springshine and From This Distance, B.U. Press, 1997 and 1998.

“Duly and Happily Noted.” Our Sense of Gratitude (Festschrift for Christopher Ricks). Ed. Michael Autrey. Senex Press, 2025.

“Poetry and the Police State,” a review of Carmen Bugan’s Poetry and the Language of Oppression: Essays on Politics and Poetics (OUP 2021), Essays in Criticism, January 2024.

“‘The Push of the Whole Man’: Heaney on Robert Lowell.” The Frontiers of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose. Eds. Eugene O’Brien and Ian Hickey, London: Routledge, 2024.

“‘Words that the rest of us can understand, in Heaney’s Mythmaking, Eds. Ian Hickey and Ellen Howley, London: Routledge, 2023.

“The Plaints of Robert Lowell,” Robert Lowell in Context. Eds. Thomas Austenfeld and Grzegorz Kosc. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

“A Place Apart: Sound, Silence and Play in the Poetry of Fanny Howe,” North American Women Poets in the Twenty-First Century. Eds. Claudia Rankine, Kazim Ali and Lisa Sewall. CT: Wesleyan Press (February 2020).

The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Poet Rosanna Warren. October 22, 2020.
https://therumpus.net/2020/10/the-rumpus-mini-interview-project-rosanna-warren/

Select Readings and Lectures

Poetry Reading with William Logan, Bay State Road Poetry Series, Boston MA, December 4, 2025.

Reading of Seamus Heaney’s Station Island (adapted by Mike Steffen) at the Cambridge Public Library, October 19, 2023.

Boston Poetry Marathon, August 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Invited Lecture, “The After-life of an Image in Seamus Heaney’s Late Poetry,” National Library of Ireland, Dublin, (Virtual), ‘Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again’ exhibit, April 13, 2021.

A Poets’ Tribute to Michael and Edna Longley, Boston College, Burns Library. Sponsored by The Poets’ Theatre. With Robert Pinsky, Greg Delanty, Suzanne Matson and others. October 7, 2019.

Virginia Beall Ball Lecturer on Contemporary Poetry for the 2019 Beall Poetry Festival, Baylor University, Waco TX, April 2019.

Boston Poets and their Predecessors: A Muster of Poets, The Poet’s Theatre, Athenaeum Library, Boston MA, January 19, 2017.

Tribute to Geoffrey Hill, Introduction and Reading, The Castle, Boston University, November 10, 2016.

Invited Lecture, “Michael Longley’s Poetry,” Queen’s University Belfast, May 2016.

Poetry Reading with Melissa Green, Poetry Centre, Suffolk University, Boston MA, March 23, 2016.

Invited Lecture, “’The Whole of Me A-Patter’: Image, Feeling and Finding Form in Heaney’s Late Work,” Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 2, 2016.

Poetry Reading, Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry (QUB) at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland, February 18, 2016.

Poetry Reading, Women Poets’ Series, Barnard College, New York NY, Oct. 29, 2015.

Poetry Reading with Robert Hass, Robert Lowell Memorial Series, Boston University, March 23, 2015.

Invited to lead a seminar on the Sonnets of Seamus Heaney at the Yeats Summer School, Sligo, Ireland, August 2014.

“Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley’s Recent Sonnets,” Invited lecture, University of Vienna, June 12, 2012.

“The American Sonnet: from Stevens to Bidart,” Invited lecture, University of Innsbruck, May 14, 2012.

“The State of the American Lyric in the Twenty-First Century,” Invited lecture, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Faculty of Humanities: Domain English, March 15, 2012.

“Lost, Loosed: Some Thoughts on Rhyme in Seamus Heaney’s Sonnets,” Guest Speaker, Harvard University, Department of English and American Literature and Language,” January 24, 2007.

Other Professional Activities and Awards

Fulbright Professor of Anglophone-Irish Literature and Writing, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2016.

Fulbright Teaching/Research Award, University of Innsbruck Visiting Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2011-2012.

Director, Poetry Reading Series at Boston University.

Chair of the Institute for the Study of Irish Culture, Boston University.

Council Member, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers (ALSCW), 2016–present.

Review Panel for Annual Fulbright Scholar Awards, US/UK Fulbright Commission, 2016–present.

Impact Scholar Faculty Mentor

BU Provost’s Arts Council

Faculty Mentor, BU Fulbright Campus Committee, BU Fellowships, Office of Provost