Author or editor of twenty-three books. On eighteen journal editorial boards. Work translated into Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, etc. Publications range across many areas, including poetic form, literary theory, and Irish and South African writing. After obtaining degrees in his native South Africa and at Cambridge, he was Research Fellow at Oxford. He has taught in the UK, France, Italy and the USA, and is currently Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. Recent visiting fellowships include All Souls College, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advance Study, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the National Center for the Humanities. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.