Outlandish
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. Jo’s debut pamphlet Moveable Type (New Writing North) was published in 2020.
