Award-winning poet, writer, sound artist and performer Caroline Bergvall has an interdisciplinary practice, working across artforms, media and languages internationally. Her works include books, performances, sound installations and collaborative events.

The recipient of many international commissions, Caroline Bergvall writes, performs and works in interdisciplinary often collaborative ways.

Projects alternate between books, printed matter, drawings, collaborative performances, site-specific installations and sound. Her sparse textual, spatial and audio works are often developed through a combination of literary, historical documents and various material traces. Her poetics are dedicated to manifesting cross-cultural contexts, identities on the move, in transition, in formation, or suspension, multilingual, hybrid, displaced, or diasporic. Her methods emerge from experiential, embodied as well as critical focus.

Recent awards include a Cholmondeley Award for her poetic production (UK, 2017); first recipient of the art literary prize Prix Littéraire Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2017); Kelly Writers House Fellow (Philadelphia, 2022), a Bogliasco Fellowship, (Genoa, 2019).

Currently Global Professorial Fellow, Queen Mary University London.

Books: Alisoun Sings (2019), Drift (NY 2014) and Meddle English (NY 2011). Meddle English translated into French by Vincent Broqua/Abigail Lang & Anne Portugal as L’Anglais Mêlé (Presses du Reel, 2018).

Just published: Caroline Bergvall’s Medievalist Poetics: Migratory Texts and Transhistoric Methods, eds. C Bergvall & Joshua Davies (Arc Humanities Press, Dec 2023)

A few recent projects and commissions: Say Parsley installation, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2023, Apricot Tree sculptural work, Tostrup Slot, Denmark, 2022, Nattsong performance, Cement Fields, Rivers Institute, New Orleans, & Turner Contemporary, 2021, Conference of the Birds (After Sweeney), Dublin ILF 2019, Conference of the Birds (After Attar), Whitstable Biennale (2018), Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds, text & voice, for Kym Myhr CD, Hubro (2018), Pink Trombone, audiowork Documenta 14, Kassel/Athens (2017); Ragadawn (Galway City of Culture, 2020, Atlas Arts, Skye, Mucem Marseille 2018, La Batie, CH / Estuary Festival, UK 2016); Together, installed audiowork, Mamco Museum, Geneva (2014);..

Larger lockdown works: live online: Night & Refuge, 1 + 2, live collaborative writing events between bilingual/bicultural poets. Commissioning hosts: Cement Field (UK, May 20); Oslo International Poetry Festival (Nov’20)
Sonoscura, collaborative film poem. Online, Planet P, Berlin International Poetry Festival (June’20).

Live Commissions: Conference of the Birds (After Sweeney), Dublin ILF 2019, Conference of the Birds (After Attar), Whitstable Biennale (2018), Ragadawn  (Batie, Geneva, CH / Estuary Festival, UK 2016-2018)

Some Sound Outputs: Sonoscura (2021), Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds, text & voice, for Kym Myhr (CD, Norway 2018), Oh My Oh My, Documenta14, Kassel/Athens (2017);  Together, Mamco Museum, Geneva (2014)

Selected performances/installation venues:

Maijazz (Stavanger, Norway), Henry Moore Institute, Atlas Arts (Isle of Skye), MUCEM (Marseille); Actoral (Marseille); Jewish Museum (Munich),  Kube (Ålesund), Tate Modern (London), Serpentine Gallery (London), Ritournelles (Bordeaux); Festival de la Batie (Geneva); Arnolfini Gallery (Bristol); Whitstable Biennale (Whistable), Louisiana Museum (Copenhagen), Khoj Art Centre (New Delhi), Fondation Vuitton (Paris); Southbank Centre (London); Arnolfini Gallery (Bristol), MUkHa (Antwerp), MACBA (Barcelona); Samtidsmuseet (Oslo); Luma Foundation (Zurich); MAMCO Museum of Contemporary Art (Geneva); Fundacio Tapiès, (Barcelona); MCA (Denver), MOMA (NY), Whitney Biennial (NY); The Power Plant  (Toronto), St. Marks Poetry Center (NY),..

Solo Shows: Drift, Callicoon Fine Arts, (NYC, 2015); Front, Vita Kuben, Norrlandsoperan (Umeå, Sweden, 2013); Middling English (John Hansard Gallery, 2010); My Chaucer (DIA Foundation/Belladonna,2005), Say: Parsley (Spacex, 2001).

Selected Group Shows: Making Migration Visible (ICA/MECA,2018), Time After Time (John Hansard Gallery, 2018), Poesie Now! (Fondation Vuitton, Paris, 2014); Word. Sound. Power (Tate Modern & Khoj Art Centre, New Delhi, 2014); Postscript (MCA Denver/ Powerplant, Toronto, 2013); Visual Poetics (South Bank Centre, London, 2012)

Work in Recent Anthologies : Time After Time catalogue, John Hansard Gallery (2018);  The New Concrete (Hayward Gallery, 2015), The Animated Reader (New Museum, NY 2015);

Residencies, Fellowships and Positions: Visiting Professor, Kings College London (2017-2022). Instrumental in setting up the interdisciplinary Performance Writing programme at Dartington College of Arts, Director (1995-2000) and has been co-chair in Writing at Bard College (NY, 2004-2007). Mellon Fellow in Collaborative Arts (w/ Jen Scappettone & Judd Morrissey), University of Chicago (2016). Writer-in-Residence, Whitechapel Gallery (2014). Judith E. Wilson Fellowship, Cambridge University (2013-14). AHRC Fellow in the Performing Arts (2007-2010). Visiting Faculty, Summer Writing Program, Naropa Institute (Boulder, CO).