Joe was born in 1993 and read English Literature with Creative Writing at The University of Manchester. He holds an MA from the Centre for New Writing. A winner of the 2017/18 New Poets prize, his debut pamphlet Somewhere Far will be published in 2019 by the Poetry Business. His reviews and poems have appeared in PN Review, The North, The Interpreter’s House, Brittle Star, And Other Poems, The Manchester Review, Lighthouse, Crannóg Magazine, The High Window and elsewhere. In January 2018 he was named one of Eyewear’s Best New British and Irish Poets. Having recently acquired a very (very very) overgrown allotment, he divides his time between the library and The Southern Allotments Society.
Quotes:
The syntactical precision here demonstrates a care and attention to the weight and balance of each line that is laudable but when wedded to feeling, as it is here, technical excellence rises above mere flair in to something very special. These are assured and beguiling poems. – Kayo Chingonyi (Judge’s commentary – New Poets Prize)
Complex emotions condensed into tiny images – Kamila Shamsie (Manchester Anthology VI Foreward)
A moose, a giant turtle, a parrot, a snail, sparrows, a couple of grizzly bears are among the creatures which enter Joe Carrick-Varty’s observant, vivid poems, but the book’s most powerful and recurring presence is possibly the poet’s father: when he asks him, in In Amber, ‘did you feel it too?’, readers will know the answer. These touching, carefully made poems have an eye for things that happen once, and which resonate once he has set them down on the page. Somehwere Far is an auspicious debut. – John McAullife
