My research concentrates on contemporary American poetry, science studies and the medical humanities. I received a Ph.D. in English from SUNY Buffalo in 2017. My studies in the United States were supported by a Fulbright scholarship and an FCT grant for doctoral students. In my dissertation, "Life Lines: Experimental American Poetry and the Concept of Living Form", I explored my interest in the relation between poetic language and the so-called "languages of nature" (the divine word, the genetic code, cybernetic information, biosemiotics, etc). I argued that the nineteenth century concept of “living form” (the idea that, like an organism, a poem develops itself from within, according to an unpredictable internal logic) is not, as some critics have argued, anathema to avant-garde writing, reportedly anti-organic in its uncompromising disjointedness. By contrast, I contend that the concept survived and flourished, under different guises, in the work of a number of contemporary experimental poets. Indebted to nineteenth century science, the notion of a “living form” endured throughout the twentieth century, going through a number of transformations that mirrored the mutations undergone by the ideas of “organism” and “life” in the scientific and philosophical communities. Poets: Ed Dorn, P. Inman, Chris Vitiello, A.M.J. Crawford and Christian Bök. A book-length version of this study is currently under review. I am currently an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow at University College Dublin and an FCT Junior Researcher at the University of Porto (CEEC Individual 2017). My project, "Old Pioneers", investigates how older experimental American poets challenge the notion that vanguardism is a caprice of youth and the idea that old age is a time of recapitulation, reconciliation and resignation. I will survey the recent work of Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman and Rae Armantrout. These poets position themselves against a poetics of summation, sobriety and depth, highlighting instead the importance of discontinuity, disbelief, immaturity, forgetfulness and humour for literary prospection and late life well-being. In "Old Pioneers", I will continue my doctoral work on the non-linear ways in which life develops, now paying special attention to the anomalous late life trajectories outlined by the poets in question.