Michael Allen is a PhD candidate in English at Harvard University. He earned a BA from George Washington University in English and Political Science, and a Master’s in English from Oxford University. His work explores the relationship between literary form and sociability, politics, and history. Forms of Renewal, his HMUI-supported project, examines poets’ attempts to remake lyric form alongside modernist planners’ attempts to impose orderly social forms on urban populations. This research draws on micro-geographies of place and the history of urban planning to read mid-century American poetry in light of contested visions of city life. He is the winner of the English postgraduate essay prize, the Boston Ruskin Prize, and the Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize. His work has appeared in Textual Practice and The Keats-Shelley Review.