Dr Kelsi R Delaney

I joined the University of Bristol in 2023 as a Lecturer in English. I am a specialist in decolonial poetry studies, with a focus on Anglophone Caribbean poetry written both within the Caribbean and across its diaspora. 

I am currently finishing my first monograph, Form in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Poetry. As well as providing a comprehensive account of recent developments in poetic form written across the Caribbean and its diaspora, the book highlights how poetic form is employed by Caribbean poets to signal complex cultural and political affiliations. Further, through an illumination of, and challenge to, eurocentrism in the epistemology of poetic form, the book explores how critical conceptions of poetic form can and must be expanded to better represent the multifarious voices of poets writing globally in English.

I am also currently conducting research on the AHRC-funded international collaborative project, ‘Representing Gender-Based Violence: Literature, Performance and Activism in the Anglophone Caribbean’. In this project, I focus on print literatures and spoken word poetry, working with colleagues from the University of Leicester and the University of the West Indies.

Other research areas I am interested in include: Black British and Caribbean spoken word, the permeable boundary between page and stage poetry, Anglophone Caribbean sonnet traditions, and methodologies of arts-based activism.

Outside of my academic work, I am currently collaborating with New Walk Editions as a guest editor, bringing emerging Caribbean poets to a UK audience. I am highly committed, in my teaching, research and outreach activities, to challenging eurocentrism in literary studies and advocating for a more inclusive landscape within Higher Education.