Award-winning poet, broadcaster and Chester graduate inspires future authors

Dr Jake Morris-Campbell shared pieces from his first full collection of poetry, Corrigenda for Costafine Town, with students and staff at the University - where his literary journey began. A Question and Answer session also spanned a variety of subjects and he offered further advice, with third year students, on publishing work. 

Dr Morris-Campbell studied his Master of Arts in Creative Writing and Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Creative Writing with English at the University and now also returns as a visiting lecturer.

As a 2021 BBC/Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker, he has since been recognised among the UK’s brightest minds in Arts and Humanities and regularly appears on Radio 3 programmes including Free Thinking and Northern Drift.

He has won New Writing North’s Andrew Waterhouse Award, frequently teams up with creative practitioners and other specialists on a variety of arts programmes, is an Associate Lecturer and Research Assistant in English and Creative Writing at Newcastle University and also works freelance as a writer, critic and tutor.

At the University event hosted at the Vicarage, home to the English Department, he read poems bringing the post-industrial landscape of England's North-East alive through its many contradictions.

Prior to Corrigenda for Costafine Town being published by Blue Diode Press in 2021, Dr Morris-Campbell published two pamphlets of poetry: The Coast Will Wait Behind You (Art Editions North, 2015) and Definitions of Distance (Red Squirrel Press, 2012). His work also often appears as part of multi-disciplinary collaborations, including Ghosts of the Restless Shore: Space, Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast and the Heritage Lottery Funded initiative, Stringing Bedes: A Poetry and Print Pilgrimage.

Students described the event as “helpful”, “inspiring”, how they appreciated hearing from a graduate who had published work and how they enjoyed the poems illustrating life in the North-East of England.

Dr Morris-Campbell said: "The Vicarage is the heart of a special academic community where I've always felt welcomed. It was a pleasure coming back to speak to the next generation of Creative Writing students. I wish them every success."

Dr Ian Seed, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Programme Leader for BA Creative Writing at the University of Chester said: “We were delighted to welcome Dr Jake Morris-Campbell back to the Department of English. Jake first gave a brilliant talk to third year Creative Writing and Literature poetry students about routes to publication and his own journey as a poet, and then gave a wonderful reading from his new book, Corrigenda for Costafine Town, to students and tutors from across the English Department. There was also a lively Q&A session, covering topics from the position of the Humanities in today’s society to the ins-and-outs of writing and editing a collection of poetry.”