Biography – Joe Carrick-Varty

Joe Carrick-Varty is a British-Irish poet and the author of two books: Before Violence (Carcanet, 2026), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and More Sky (Carcanet, 2023), which won an Eric Gregory Award, was shortlisted for the T S. Eliot Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and was named a Poetry Book of the Year by the Irish Times. His pamphlet, Somewhere Far (The Poetry Business, 2019), won the New Poets Prize.

In 2023, he was named the Anthony Burgess Fellow In Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. He founded and edited bath magg from 2019 until its closure in 2023.

His work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, including Granta, New Statesman, POETRY, The Poetry Review, The Forward Book of Poetry, The London Magazine, PN Review, and Poetry London.

“As strong as any debut I’ve read in years.”

– Shane McCrae

“Joe Carrick-Varty writes with a sharp eye and a strong hand.”

– Jeanette Winterson

“This pamphlet is open-hearted, thoughtful – painfully, beautifully alive to the world and its strange specifics.”

– Ella Frears

“I’m utterly convinced of this poet’s talent.”

– Wayne Holloway-Smith

“These poems carry the vivid pain of loss and difficult relationships, even while enacting the necessary agony of letting go.”

– Meryl Pugh (The Poetry Review)

“The syntactical precision here demonstrates a care and attention to the weight and balance of each line that is laudable, but when wedded to feeling, as it is here, technical excellence rises above mere flair into something very special. These are assured and beguiling poems.”

– Kayo Chingonyi (Judge’s commentary – New Poets Prize)

“Somewhere Far is an auspicious debut.”