Claire Watt, St Edmund's

Biographical Information

I grew up on the Isle of Wight and studied my undergraduate degree in English at the University of Oxford, after which I worked in copywriting before returning to academia. I have a Master’s degree in English Literature from University College London and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Kent in Paris. As a poet, filmmaker and a visual artist, I find that my creative work complements my academic work.

My PhD research focuses on poetry and film in New York City in the 1980s, specifically poets who made their own videos and the process of adaptation. My thesis argues that a specific subgenre of ‘poetry-videos’ emerged in the US during the period 1980s, primarily influenced by the birth of MTV and the development of home video technology. Developing alongside the first music videos and utilising contemporary filmic techniques, I argue that these poetry-videos form a distinct grouping which distinguishes them from previous poetry films and video poems, and that city space is specifically harnessed for its heterotopian potential within these poetry-videos in order to enliven these poets' social protests.

I have co-organised several graduate conferences and I am currently the co-convenor of the Graduate Drama and Performance Seminar and one of the organisers of the 20th Century and Contemporary Graduate Seminar. I am also the organiser of the student arm of the 2023 Cambridge Festival, through which I am partnering with local Cambridge Arts venues. I am a keen poetry editor and I have previously assisted in editing and peer reviewing journals, including Le Menteur and Plath Profiles. I have recently returned to Cambridge after a one year fellowship with Dr. Franca Bellarsi at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, supported by the Fondation Weinar-Anspach, through which I gained the International Certificate in Doctoral Training. I also work in public engagement and I have completed the Cambridge University Engaged Researcher training, as well as the Associate Fellowship qualification.

I am an advocate for increased access in higher education and I have previously worked at Project Rousseau, a charity helping underserved New York City high school students attend university, and in London prisons teaching public speaking. I am the postgraduate representative for the British Association of American studies, wherein I advocate for widening access in higher education. My doctoral research has kindly been supported by the Fondation Weinar-Anspach, St Edmund’s College Santander Fund, The Richard Stapley Trust and Funds for Women Graduates.

Research Interests

Modern and contemporary poetry, the New York School, the Beat Generation, US poetry, poetry and film, rap and hip hop, poetry films, adaptation studies, performance poetry, poetry and music, music videos, ecopoetry, poetry and protest, solarpunk, performance studies.

Specific authors: Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Ntozake Shange, Bob Holman, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, William S. Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Sylvia Plath, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, Bob Dylan, Claudia Rankine, Arianna Reines.

Selected Publications

Academic Publications:

• “This is a woman’s trip”: Adapting Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls for stage and screen (Forthcoming in Comparative Drama, 2025).

• “We are actually here”: Refusing Erasure in Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman and 'We Are Here' (Forthcoming in English Studies in Africa, 2025).

• 'Review: The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators,' Moveable Type, XII, ‘Nostalgia’ (2020), pp. 86-88.

• ‘The Beats as Precursors to Solarpunk,’ Solarpunk Conference 2023, Published Proceedings.

Conferences and Presentations:

• "Father Death, I’m Coming Home," Palimpsestic Place in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Father Death Blues’ and ‘In My Kitchen In New York,’ British Association of American Studies Conference 2025, Hatfield (April 2025)
• ‘'’This is a woman's trip”: Adapting Ntozake Shange's for colored girls for stage and screen,' Comparative Drama Conference 2024, Orlando and Online (May 2024)
• '"Junk plutonium!": Eco-optimism in Anne Waldman's Uh-Oh Plutonium!,’ European Beat Studies Network Conference 2024, Białystok (April 2024)
• 'The Beats as Precursors to Solarpunk', Solarpunk Conference 2023: From Imagination to Action, Online (June 2023)
• ‘''Feel good. Feel better. Move forward. Let it go': Claudia Rankine's Citizen,' Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference 2022, Baltimore (March 2022)
• ‘Questioning ‘The Message’: Hip Hop’s First Taste of Institutions,’ European Hip Hop Studies Network Conference 2022, Paris and Online (January 2022)
• "While she whispered a song along the keyboard': Sampling in the New York School,' Cambridge University Graduate Symposium 2021, Cambridge (November 2021).

Creative Publications:

• My poems have been published in Tears in the Fence, Yes Ma’am, The Menteur and CatheXis Northwest Press, amongst other magazines, and my writing has been showcased in two mixed media art exhibitions, ‘Personal Progress’, in Urban Arts Gallery, Utah (March - April 2019), and ‘Art on the Trails’ at Beal’s Preserve, Massachusetts (June - September 2019), as well as at the Old Red Lion Theatre, London (August 2023), Omnibus Theatre (July 2025) and ZOO Playground (August 2025).