Shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2023
Longlisted for the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize
Jo Clement's first collection confronts Romantic impressions of British Gypsy ethnicity and lyrically lays them to rest. From Wordsworth to Top Gear, her poems invite us to consider notions of otherness, trespass, and craft. She steps between ancient stopping places and mardy council estates to trill elegiac Romanes, English, and birdsong about witches, wild camping, and Silver Cross prams. Compelled by a brutal Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller diasporic legacy, Outlandish tenderly praises the poem-as-protest and illuminates a hidden and threatened culture.
'These deeply personal poems are rich with the lexicon of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller life. They bear the weight of suspicion and violence directed towards those who live within the rhythms and currents of the natural world... Many of the poems hold notes of such tenderness, they stop your breath.' - Shash Trevett, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Summer 2022
‘Jo Clement’s eagerly anticipated first collection, Outlandish is tender, energetic and deeply personal. These careful and intelligent poems are full of musicality and sing with the language and culture of Roma communities. This book is a joy to read and lose yourself in.’ – Will Mackie, New Writing North (New and Recent Poetry from the North, Summer 2022)
‘Outlandish from Jo Clement was an evocative, beautiful, and challenging narrative of British Gypsy ethnicity.’ - Sam Illingworth, Poetry News (Christmas Reading, 2022)
‘As vivid as engravings, the poems in Jo Clement’s debut collection Outlandish braid together a richness of language and a precision of imagery to illuminate Traveller identity and Roma culture. These are poems of clarity and lyricism that sing of people, places, and the beauty of what is passed down.’ - Kris Johnson (Poetry Society Books of the Year 2022)
‘Jo lives in the north east of England, with roots in the Roma Traveller community. .. Her poetry considers notions of otherness, under-represented identities, communities under threat, and sings of wild beauty and brutality.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week
‘Her first full length poetry collection finds her in confident voice, whether writing about her intimate experiences of belonging, or exploring the canon of literature, and the ‘othering’ perpetuated by dominant cultures in contemporary society... every page articulates the truth of the making of this remarkable poet.’ - Hannah Stone, The Lake
Jo Clement was born in Darlington in 1986. She received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2012. She is Editor of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine, and founded the imprint Wagtail with support from the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC). In 2021 Butcher’s Dog published Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology, edited by her. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Bridport, Melita Hume and Troubadour International prizes, and she has written for The Travellers’ Times, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Your Local Arena. She was awarded an inaugural AHRC Northern Bridge scholarship for her PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. She is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Northumbria University, and lives in North Shields.
Her first book-length collection, Outlandish, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2022, draws on new work as well as poems from her debut pamphlet Moveable Type (New Writing North, 2020), and from a collaborative walking and writing book, also titled Outlandish, co-authored with Damian Le Bas with drawings by W. John Hewitt, which was commissioned by New Writing North for the 2019 Durham Book Festival. Outlandish was shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2023 and longlisted for the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize.
