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Personal profile

Academic Biography

Dr Jenna Clake joined the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law in June 2018. Jenna holds a BA (Hons) in English with Creative Writing, a MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing, all achieved at the University of Birmingham. Jenna's research interests include the relationship between writing and popular culture, the prose poem and lyric essay, Absurdism, intersectional feminism, and equality, diversity, and inclusivity in the literary sphere.

Jenna is a member of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team, and a member of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law Research Innovation Subcommittee. She is the Northern Bridge Consortium's Insitutional Subject Lead for Creative Writing. She is a member of HAStEN, the Humanities and Social Sciences Equality Network North East.

Research interests

As a poet, Jenna's writing has been published widely in journals of international repute, including Poetry Review, The White Review, The Rialto, The Stinging Fly, and Oxford Poetry. Her debut poetry collection, Fortune Cookie (2017), was awarded the Melita Hume Prize and shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award. In 2018, Jenna received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Additionally, she was shortlisted for the inaugral Rebecca Swift Women Poets' Prize, commended in the University of Hertfordshire Single Poem Prize, and placed second in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. A pamphlet of her experimental prose poems, CLAKE / Interview For, was published by Verve Poetry Press in 2018, and a micro-pamphlet of poems I can't promise you anything but whale fall / for you was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. Her second full-length poetry collection, Museum of Ice Cream was published by Bloodaxe in 2021, and was featured in The TLS and The Telegraph, and named as one of the best poetry books of 2021 by The Telegraph, The F-Word, and the Poetry Book Society.

Jenna additionally reviews poetry for Poetry London, Poetry School, and The Poetry Review.

Her debut novel, Disturbance, will be published by Trapeze in the UK and W.W. Norton in the US in summer 2023.


Her chapter 'Rat Phones, Alligators, Lemon Pepper Wet: The New Absurd of Atlanta' will feature in Television as Literature: From the Ordinary to the Unthinkable (Reto Winckler and Víctor Huertas Martín [eds.], Palgrave).

She is at work on a monograph for Edinburgh University Press entitled Whiteness, Feminism and the Absurd in Contemporary British and US Poetry.

External Research Collaborations

Jenna has worked with Dr Richard O'Brien (Northumbria University) to organise a conference designed to promote cross disciplinary dialogue and collaboration: Poetry and TV (2018), a symposium exploring the complex relationships between the two mediums.

Through writing residencies with ORCA and the Natural History Society of Northumbria, Jenna has developed a micro- pamphlet poems, I can't promise you anything, but whale fall / for you.

Learning and Teaching Interests and Activities

Jenna is a Fellow of Advance HE. Her teaching is focused on active learning, and fostering confidence and digital capabilities. Her teaching interests are in writing for social change, the relationships between writing and popular culture, and poetry and fiction more broadly.

Jenna currently teaches on Teesside's Creative Writing BA, and English Studies and Creative Writing BA. Jenna also teaches across modules on Teesside's MA Creative Writing (Online), and she is Course Leader for both the MA Creative Writing (Online) and the MA Creative Writing and Wellbeing.

PhD and Research Opportunities

Jenna welcomes enquiries from prospective research students interested in the relationships between writing and popular culture, writing and technology, modern poetry aesthetics and movements, the prose poem, the Surreal and the Absurd, feminist writing, and writing for social change. She also welcomes proposals for Collaborative Doctoral Awards as part of the Northern Bridge Consortium.

Jenna is Director of Studies for Christina Wilson's  Northern Bridge Consortium funded Collaborative Doctoral Award: 'Systemic Inclusion: Representation and Diversity in UK Literary Festivals'. She is also Director of Studies for Sam Rose's PhD project on writing for cancer survivors. She acts as Director of Studies for Carmen Thompson's PhD project on space, place, and belonging in the Tees Valley.

Jenna is second supervisor for two students: Jessica Wortley and Eve Darwood.

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