Our projects
As you write it, our Creative Writing Lecturers are writing too, and also involved in many community-led and literary projects supported by grants and external partners.
Ceri Morgan, Professor of Place-Writing and Geohumanities, draws from the post-industrial landscapes of Stoke-on-Trent and in Quebec with her AHRC Project Heartlands/Pays du Coer. The project explores how new regional writings can be shaped by our relationships with urban and ex-urban spaces and how our bodies engage with those spaces as part of the creative process.
Heartlands: Earth & Bones has now won 5 awards including Director's Choice, Thomas Edison Film Festival 2025, Best Choreography Biencortos 2024, and Best Performance Biencortos 2024. The film will be screened at Northampton Film Festival 2025 for IWD: IWD: Northampton Film Festival 2025: IWD short films Selection 1 (PG).
"As a researcher-practitioner, I am a critic and creative writer, and much of my work is at the border of literary studies, creative writing, and geography. I recently finished a big project (or the funded part of it, at least!) on a region in southeastern Québec. Supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship, ‘Heartlands/Pays du coœur: Geohumanities and Québec’s “regional” fiction’ was a two-stranded project. One strand considered representations of the Eastern Townships in twenty-first century fiction and creative nonfiction. The other strand saw me work with artists and community members to make new place-art, including a digital literary map, audio walk, dance solo, and dance-poetry film. Made with Restoke and Junction15, the film, Heartlands: Earth & Bones (2024), has been screened at twenty-five international festivals so far, and won five awards. You can watch it here: https://www.restoke.org.uk/collaborations.
As a prose-poet and creative nonfiction writer, I am interested in place, mobilities (or immobilities), bodies, languages and translation, performance, and form. I have a longstanding, on-going critical-creative short book, provisionally called Mauve/d, that engages with many of these themes, along with Québec literature, especially Nicole Brossard’s French Kiss (1974), my favourite Montreal novel. Having originally written a fairly conventional travel writing book in French (my second language), I have since been translating the draft manuscript into English, also rendering the writing semi-experimental. I worked on Lyn Hejinian’s My Life as an undergraduate, and am fascinated by the challenges of writing younger and present selves within the same text. I have published two extracts so far: one from the beginning, and one inspired by the work of counter-cultural writer and radical feminist, Josée Yvon.
Shortlisted for the Fox and Star Books Inaugural Poetry Chapbook Competition.
Emma Henderson is working on her third novel with a working title: The Summer We Died. A coming-of-age tale, written over five decades, this about lifelong friends whose secret act of love and kindness concerning a terminally ill friend reveals itself fifty years later.
Lisa Blower is on the hunt for 100 Books in a 100 Years as part of the Stoke Centenary, hoping to recover 100 Potteries born authors – a different author for each year 1925-2025 – to create the first literary canon for the city. Her play The Miner Birds – working with the North Staffs Miners Wives Action Group is being rerun at The New Vic on March 6th 2025, and her short story ‘Blessing in Burslem’ recently won the VS Pritchett prize, 2025 (news article here).
With the end of the semester right around the corner, most students are buckling down into exam preparation and essay writing. That is, except for: Ikarah Woodvine, Cal Bane, Emma Fitzsimmons and Ess Tenya, who will be competing in the UniSlam poetry slam over Easter break.
UniSlam is the UK’s largest team poetry slam competition where teams of 4-5 current university students compete against other teams. It also gives opportunities to network with poets and companies such as Apples and Snakes, showcase/develop skills and participate in free slam poetry workshops.
The competition spans multiple rounds, with all teams performing in preliminary rounds before the selected teams compete in the semi-finals and grand finals. The top teams in the Grand Final compete for the UniSlam Champions title, trophy, and prize package. Past winners have received poetry book bundles and performance opportunities at the Verve Poetry Festival.
Workshops and judging panels have previously featured notable figures like Joelle Taylor, and winners, such as Courtney Conrad, have gone on to publish their works and perform at major events. This year there will be an Apples & Snakes UniSlam Takeover with open mic ft. Maria Ferguson, Kareem Parkins Brown & Bradley Taylor.
The grand finals headlining poets are Ella Frears, Latekid and Harry Baker.
This year, Keele will compete in UniSlam with their first-ever team, funded by Keele Alumni. UniSlam 2025 will take place from April 11th - 13th, 2025 in Birmingham. The preliminary rounds are on Saturday, the 12th of April, and the finals on Sunday, the 13th.
If team Keele is lucky enough to make it to the finals, please show your support by attending. You can purchase tickets for the finals here.
If you’re are interested in taking part in UniSlam next year, please contact the Slam Poetry Society.
Best of luck to all the competitors!
The results are in!
In Keele’s first ever slam poetry competition, the team took home third place in their first heat and fourth place in their second heat. These are extremely promising results and provide a bright vision for the future of performance poetry at Keele.
Also exciting is Keele’s Ikarah Woodvine being given the Ambassador’s Award. This award is presented to a team member who embodies the values of the UniSlam festival – community, encouragement, and support. This is a huge accomplishment not only for Ikarah but for the Creative Writing department as a whole! You can watch the finals of the UniSlam competition and Ikarah’s reception of the award (2:26:04) here.
These fantastic results would not have been possible without the hard work of lecturers and staff throughout the school of humanities. Special thanks to Freddie Machin, lecturer in screenwriting, as well as the rest of the English Literature and Creative Writing staff for their feedback and tutorage. These students’ hard work paid off in dividends and should go to prove the impact that a strong and diverse faculty has on the success of a university.
A huge congratulations to all involved!
Freddie is currently directing an ambitious multi-city headphone verbatim project for Nottingham Playhouse. He is also writing a new play for the Mercury Theatre, Colchester.
