Penn Newell

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Penn Newell (they/them) is poet and theorist engaging in critical ecologies and critical climate studies. They specialise in modern and contemporary literature, critical theory, and eco-critical media studies. Penn was awarded a Northern Writers Award in 2019. Their poetry has been published or performed across the UK and US, in places such as The Poetry Review, Perverse, Hobart, Magma, Under the Radar, and London Magazine, and anthologised by Triarchy Press. They have published visual poems with 3:AM, experimental queer poetics with Cordite: Transqueer, and as a Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight. With a strong relationship to visual art practice, they have worked on commission and produced work alongside or for The Courtauld Institute and Somerset House, Haarlem Artspace, Lakes Ignite Festival, The British Library, The Tate and Barnsley Civic, B-Side Festival, and elsewhere. Their review work has featured in The Times Literary Supplement, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Green Letters.

Penn's previous creative-critical projects and theoretical essays have put ecological forms and formations into conversation with late-twentieth century critical theories of the social, analysing the ontologising effects of clay, working eco-concepts in capitalist orchestrations, or the weaponisation of the weather against migrants. They published an artist book, Elemental Borders (Jwllrs, 2026), interrogating borders through the Aristotelian elements of water, air, fire, and earth. Their essays have featured or are forthcoming with Textual Practice, Social Text, Parallax, Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research, and elsewhere. Penn convenes a research network on Critical Poetics and Ecology, exploring poetry and poetics as an emancipatory methodology in ecological thought and relations. 

Penn completed a PhD in literature, critical theory, and eco-critical media studies at King’s College London in 2018, under the title 'Tearing and Forming: A Conceptual History of Clouds'. They previously held research and teaching posts at Leeds Arts University and King's College London in Creative Writing, English, Comparative Literature, and Digital Humanities. They have convened multiple research programmes, workshops and live lectures on topics such as gender and sexuality, anomalies in art and modes of existence, collaborative research methodologies, urban studies and surveillance, and critical ecologies.