"Here is delight – these poems, rich and strange, brim from ‘the skim/of blood that can’t settle’. Jo Clement’s gifts shine and dazzle: amongst the darting, many-layered music of her imagery and sensuous evocation of northerly landscapes gleams a clear-sightedness politically aware and historically acute. Meaning is interrogated as a riverine process and emerges, movingly, in significances found later. Part urban fable, part re-imagining of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller culture, these poems are beautifully made to be read and re-read, savoured for their sharp, apple-bite tenderness, their truth and wisdom, their sheer originality." - Pippa Little, poet
‘… an exciting new voice in poetry… Clement’s poems ricochet between the council estate in Darlington where she grew up, forced to settle, and the wild beauty of Northumberland, touching on the eighteenth-century wood engravings of Thomas Bewick. The rhythms and allusions are enchanting, the imagery fresh, clear and strong.’ - Anna Picard, Times Literary Supplement (Summer Books, 2022)
'These deeply personal poems are rich with the lexicon of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller life. They bear the weight of suspicion and violence directed towards those who live within the rhythms and currents of the natural world... Many of the poems hold notes of such tenderness, they stop your breath.' - Shash Trevett, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Summer 2022
'Jo Clement’s eagerly anticipated first collection, Outlandish is tender, energetic and deeply personal. These careful and intelligent poems are full of musicality and sing with the language and culture of Roma communities. This book is a joy to read and lose yourself in.' - Will Mackie, New Writing North (New & recent poetry from the North, Summer 2022)
'Jo Clement writes poems of wonderful imagination, energy, and adventure, combining her magical intelligence with a brilliantly orchestrated language drawn from the words of the Roma and the worlds through which they invisibly travel.’ – David Morley, Ted Hughes Award winning poet
'It is very rare to find a young poet with such an alert musical ear, able to listen ahead for the shape of a sound yet to be uttered.' – Sean O’Brien, T S Eliot Prize winning poet
'This is the word of the weathered hand and of the hard, hale youth; the tattered treasure, the grafter and the fetter-breaking wild. These intoxicating and fine-sprung poems instantly place Clement in the front rank of Traveller writers. May they also relight our wonder at the depths of all unsung Englands.' – Damian Le Bas, author of The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain
‘This collection forces you to consider themes of otherness and trespass, really bringing to light this hidden and threatened culture. This poetry collection paints such a vivid, striking picture.’ – Jasmine Reads
'These poems address her heritage, and the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller culture, in a rich, lyrical and beguiling way... This is a collection that repays rereading, partly for the musicality, partly for the vivid, economical imagery, and importantly, for the window that it opens on a culture that many of we 'gorgers' think we know about but, in reality, understand very little.' - Diana Cant, The Alchemy Spoon
'In this collection of poetry, Jo Clement gives voice to the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller community. Her lyrical imagery conjures the beauty of the natural landscapes across which they have lived and travelled. The reader is given insight into their culture and traditions, and the skills that are passed from generation to generation... This collection would be an ideal collection to broaden A Level students' experience of reading poetry that explores identity and ethnicity, and the life experiences that help shape, develop, and define culture.' - Jane Broadis, The School Librarian
‘Outlandish from Jo Clement was an evocative, beautiful, and challenging narrative of British Gypsy ethnicity.’ - Sam Illingworth, Poetry News (Christmas Reading, 2022)
‘As vivid as engravings, the poems in Jo Clement’s debut collection Outlandish braid together a richness of language and a precision of imagery to illuminate Traveller identity and Roma culture. These are poems of clarity and lyricism that sing of people, places, and the beauty of what is passed down.’ - Kris Johnson (Poetry Society Books of the Year 2022)
‘Jo lives in the north east of England, with roots in the Roma Traveller community. .. Her poetry considers notions of otherness, under-represented identities, communities under threat, and sings of wild beauty and brutality.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week
‘Her first full length poetry collection finds her in confident voice, whether writing about her intimate experiences of belonging, or exploring the canon of literature, and the ‘othering’ perpetuated by dominant cultures in contemporary society... every page articulates the truth of the making of this remarkable poet.’ - Hannah Stone, The Lake, on Outlandish
