Morgan Sjogren

Compelled by a brutal Roma diasporic legacy, Outlandish tenderly praises the poem-as-protest and illuminates a hidden and threatened culture.

Jo Clement’s first collection confronts Romantic impressions of British Gypsy or Roma ethnicity and lyrically lays them to rest. From Wordsworth to TV’s 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.

Born in Darlington in 1986, Jo Clement is the recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award and the Editor of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine. With support from the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), she is the founder of the imprint Wagtail. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Bridport, Melita Hume and Troubadour International prizes. She has written for The Travellers’ Times, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Your Local Arena, and currently works as a Creative Writing Lecturer at Northumbria University. She lives in North Shields. Jo holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, which was awarded an inaugural AHRC Northern Bridge scholarship. With Arts Council England support, Outlandish was first commissioned by New Writing North for the 2019 Durham Book Festival as a collaborative walking and writing book co-authored with Damian Le Bas, with drawings by W. John Hewitt. Jo’s debut pamphlet Moveable Type (New Writing North) was published in 2020. Her first book-length collection, also titled Outlandish, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2022.