Joe Carrick-Varty
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Joe Carrick-Varty | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1993 (age 32–33) |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester |
| Occupations | Poet and editor |
Joe Carrick-Varty is a British-Irish poet from Oxford, England.[1] His debut collection More Sky (2023) was shortlisted for the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize.[2][3] His pamphlet Somewhere Far (2019) won The Poetry Business's New Poets Prize.[4]
In 2022, Carrick-Varty received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and in 2023 he was named Anthony Burgess Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.[5][6] His collection Before Violence (2026) was selected as a Poetry Book Society spring recommendation.[7]
Carrick-Varty was born in 1993. He holds a BA in English Literature/Creative Writing and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester.[8] He is a co-founding editor of online poetry magazine bath magg and a book reviewer for P.N. Review.[9]
In 2019, Carrick-Varty founded bath magg, which published work by poets including Bhanu Kapil, Vona Groarke, Kim Addonizio, and Ilya Kaminsky.[10][11] In August 2023, the magazine entered a hiatus following the death of poet Gboyega Odubanjo at Shambala Festival.[12] Carrick-Varty later wrote an essay remembering Odubanjo for Poetry Foundation, stating: “When a person dies, especially so young, they’re often mythologized … but I don’t want to mythologize Gboyega’s life, because he was my friend; he was so much more than a poet.”[13]
His first book, More Sky, was named one of the best new poetry collections of 2023 by The Irish Times and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.[14] It was later shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in 2025.[15]
Carrick-Varty's poems have appeared in Granta, the New Statesman, Poetry Review and Poetry Ireland Review.[16][17]