Jo Clement is a working-class poet and interdisciplinary maker of Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller ethnicity. Born in Darlington in North East England, she holds a BA in English from Leeds University, where she won the Jack Higgins Prize for Outstanding Attainment; an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University; and a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. She received an inaugural AHRC Northern Bridge scholarship for her doctoral research on GRT identity and culture as seen in the wood engraving archive of illustrator Thomas Bewick.
Clement’s acclaimed first poetry collection, Outlandish (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), was shortlisted for the John Pollard International Poetry Prize and longlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Clement is also the author of the pamphlet Moveable Type (New Writing North, 2020) and the walking and writing book Outlandish (2019), commissioned by New Writing North and co-authored with Damian Le Bas with drawings by W. John Hewitt. Her poem “Paisley” has featured on the London Underground and been exhibited at the Scottish Poetry Library, while her poems “Listen” and “Existence” were commissioned for the Memorial to Europe's Sinti and Roma Murdered Under Nazism. She is the editor of Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology (Butcher’s Dog, 2021).
Clement’s BBC Radio appearances include Northern Drift, Enchanted Isle, Poetry Please, and Start the Week. Her poems have been published in Poetry London, The Rialto, The Financial Times, The Dark Horse, and elsewhere. She has read her poems at Arvon, Brighton Book Festival, the British Library, Durham Book Festival, International Print Biennale, Leeds Poetry Festival, Morden Tower, Newcastle Poetry Festival, the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival, and Southbank Centre. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport, Melita Hume, and Troubadour International prizes.
Clement has been managing editor of the magazine and press Butcher’s Dog since 2018. In 2022 and 2023, the press was voted in the Saboteur Awards as producing the UK's “Best Poetry Magazine.” From 2022–2024, Clement selected Poetry Book Society collections and wrote reviews for the PBS Bulletin. She is the MERL Fellow 2025 for the Museum of Rural English Life in Reading. The recipient of a 2012 Northern Writers’ Award, Clement is based in Newcastle and lectures in Creative Writing at Northumbria University.
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More Jo Clement
Video: Clement reads from Outlandish at the Newcastle Poetry Festival
Text/Audio: Read and listen to Clement's lyric essay "Chicken Blood" at WritersMosaic
Video: Listen to Clement perform her poem "Crown" in a poem film