Esme Beaumont, Girton

Biographical Information

I did my undergraduate degree in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, then began my MPhil (dissertation: Identity and Authenticity in Romantic Lyric Poetry and Twenty-First-Century Slam Poetry) at Cambridge in 2020. My PhD research examines the poetry of John Keats through the lens of parasocial interaction, those 'seeming face-to-face relationship[s]' we experience with media figures (Horton and Wohl, 1956). 

Research Interests

My research interests include lyric poetry, espeically Romantic lyric; poetry in relation to questions of identity and community; and how 'normal' people engage with poetry everyday, especially in a social or quasi-/para-social context.

Selected Publications

I have a poem in the anthology Water, the first in the Elemental Poetry series, published by Worple Press in 2026.

In 2025 I won the Barbara Wrigley Prize for poetry.