Professor John Clarke

Professor John Wedgwood Clarke is a poet, prose non-fiction writer, lead artist, editor, and Professor of Poetry. He is also Academic Director for Arts and Culture (Exeter Campuses) and a Co-director of Biodiversity and People Network at the University of Exeter. 

He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before going on to study literature and completing a D.Phil. in Modernist poetry at the University of York. He set up the Beverley Literature Festival and Bridlington Poetry and ran them for ten years before leaving to undertake a Leverhulme Artists’ Residency at the University of Hull in 2012/13. Prior to his current appointment, he was a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Hull for four years. 

Professor Clarke builds creative-critical dialogue and collaborative practices into his writing and teaching. His current work focuses on poetry and ecology. His latest collection Boy Thing, published by Arc in 2023, explores autobiography through encounters with place and ecology. His two collections of poetry, Ghost Pot (2013), Landfill (2017) explore the poetics of rubbish and marine ecology. His poems have been published in periodicals of national and international significance, including PN Review, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland, Poetry London, POEM, Poetry Wales, Oxford Poetry, The New Statesman, Guardian on-line, Rialto, Magma, Antigonish Review and many others. He has been invited to read from it at National Poetry Live at the South Bank Centre, The National Gallery, The National Maritime Museum, and many literary festivals. Additionally, Professor Clarke was interviewed and read from the collection on BBCR4 Today Programme. His TV credits as researcher and presenter include the documentaries Cornwall's Red River (2022), Through the Lens of Larkin (2017), and The Books that Made Britain (2016) for BBC4.