Dr Lucy Mercer

Lucy Mercer is a Postdoctoral Fellow whose creative-critical research practice informs the Communities strand of RENEW. Her debut poetry collection Emblem (Prototype, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was featured on BBC Radio 3. Her poems have been published in magazines such as Poetry Review, Poetry London and The White Review, and essays in Art Review, Granta and others. Her doctoral thesis devised a speculative philosophy of obscurity in relation to early modern emblems.

She was awarded the 2024 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for her proposal Afterlife, a book-length essay that will be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. 

Lucy's research interests include contemporary literature, material histories and neglected artefacts, visual cultures, ecological thinking. She often collaborates with visual artists and is currently working on several interdisciplinary projects concerned with poetics, literary value and material histories. Before joining Exeter, Lucy taught creative writing and visual cultures at Goldsmiths and University of Westminster.

As part of RENEW she has been running the Literature X Ecology series: conversations with leading contemporary poets.