Emily Critchley

Emily Critchley (born 1980) is an experimental writer and former academic. Her writings have garnered numerous international awards, including the Jane Martin Prize for Poetry and the John Kinsella-Tracy Ryan Prize for Poetry, among others. Her work has been translated into several languages.

Early life Critchley was born in Athens, Greece, and grew up in Dorset, England. Her father is English and her mother, Greek. She states that her influences include T. S. Eliot, the Language poets, Gertrude Stein, and John Berryman, as well as canonical English poets such as William Shakespeare and John Milton. https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2015/07/translations-poems/

Education Critchley gained her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Oxford, her MA in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Bristol University,

Career Critchley specializes in contemporary experimental writing. In 2006, she organized a three-day international conference for contemporary experimental women's writing at the University of Cambridge and another in 2010 at the University of Greenwich. She is an editor of Out of Everywhere 2: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK, the sequel to the poetry anthology Out of Everywhere published by Reality Street Press in 1996. She is a co-editor of #MeToo: A Poetry Collective.

Critchley has been widely anthologised and interviewed, and her writing has been compared to that of Denise Riley, Leslie Scalapino, and Mina Loy. She has been performing her work since 2000. and in 2011, was joint winner of the national Jane Martin Prize for Poetry.

In 2024 Critchley published a poem, 'Never Again is Now,' in the journal Creative Flight, in which she appears to equate support for pro-Palestinian causes following Israel's response to the October 7, 2023 attacks, with antisemitism and Naziism. The poem repeats claims that Hamas attackers beheaded babies, and suggests Israel's critics "glorify rapists and celebrate warmongers." It accuses those demonstrating support for the people of Gaza of ignoring the "slavery and the sexual trafficking; the misogyny and paedophilia; the stolen aid and the starvation; the stonings and the mutilations; the public hangings and the bigger mission."

Critchley is formerly Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Greenwich Introduction to #MeToo: A Poetry Collective (Chicago Review, Summer, 2018) Entries on Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Rosmarie Waldrop, Jean Day, Vanessa Place, Jennifer Moxley and Alice Notley in The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry, ed. Ian Hamilton and Jeremy Noel Tod (Oxford University Press, 2013) 'Denise Riley: "Writing our / Difficulties,"' Poetry Review (2012) '"Moi aussi, Marianne," or Moving the Targets, being a crypto-ironic response, etc.' The Claudius App (August 2011) Guest editor of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 3:2: a Greenwich Cross-Genre Festival edition (September 2011) '"We live on buoyant fragments" (Andrea Brady): A further selection of American writers from the Greenwich Cross-Genre Festival,' Cambridge Literary Review, ed. Boris Jardine and Lydia White, 1:5 (May, 2011) 'A selection of North American women writers from the Greenwich Cross-Genre Festival (July 2010), and some thoughts about their work', Cambridge Literary Review, ed. Boris Jardine and Lydia White, 1:4 (Michaelmas 2010); pp. 9–43 'Lyn Hejinian's Faustienne Beings-With', Stress Fractures, ed., Tom Chivers (London: Penned in the Margins, 2010), pp. 55–72 'Leslie Scalapino's "alternative ways of seeing"', Delirious Hem, eds, Cara Benson, Elizabeth Bryant, Catherine Wagner (September 5, 2010) lesliescalapinotribute.wikispaces.com/file/view/Emily+Critchley7.pdf Review of Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip, HOW2 Journal, 3: 3 (2009) '"oubts, Complications and Distractions": Rethinking the Role of Women in Language Poetry', Hot Gun! ed., Josh Stanley, 1:1 (Summer 09) ), pp. 29–49 'Post-Marginal Positions: Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community', ed. Cathy Wagner, Jacket magazine, 1:34 (Oct 2007) 'Dilemmatic boundaries: constructing a poetics of thinking', Intercapillary Space, ed, Edmund Hardy, 1:4 (November 2006) www.lulu.com/items/volume_34/533000/533882/2/print/533882.pdf A conference overview + introduction to the Cambridge Contemporary Experimental Women's Poetry Festival (organised by myself in 2006), How2 journal, vol. 3:1 (Summer 2007)

Published works When I say I Believe Women… (London: bad press, 2006) Home (London: Prototype, 2021)

Awards and accolades

National Poetry Competition (2020) -- Poems long listed Forward Prize for poetry (2018) -- Poems Highly Commended Pacuare Nature Poetry Competition, Trinidad and Tobago (2015) -- Runner up Jane Martin Prize for Poetry (2011) -- National Winner The John Kinsella-Tracy Ryan Prize for Poetry (University of Cambridge, 2004) -- Winner The Other Prize (University of Cambridge, 2003) -- Winner for best original play