Clementine Ewokolo Burnley Launch Events

'Clementine Ewokolo Burnley’s poems are thoughtful, wry, yet cumulatively disarming in their vivid, sharply observed renditions of diasporic family life. From West Africa to Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Scottish Isles via Lombardy, London and Berlin, hers is the roving, analytical eye of the Afropean flâneur. A compelling storyteller, she shapeshifts between intimate and sociocultural histories, cities and continents, cousins and aunties, via a deft multilingualism that includes English, German and the languages and vernacular of her ancestral homeland, Cameroon.' – Karen McCarthy Woolf

 

In her wide-ranging debut collection, Clementine Ewokolo Burnley asks what remains after once-familiar places and people have gone. The poems criss-cross the Atlantic, beginning in the 1850s. The voices of Caribbean returnees to the west African coast mingle with those of west African recaptives, German missionaries, and kidnappers. They witness the changes in family life through the generations as villagers or townsfolk are uprooted or stay put or uproot themselves, defying expectations by leaving or returning.

Belling the Leopard was a joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024 and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. It will be published by Bloodaxe Books on 17 September 2026.

Clementine Ewokolo Burnley grew up in Victoria, Cameroon, and has lived between Scotland, Italy and Germany for many years. She has an M.Sc. in Computational Linguistics from Manchester University, and is a UKCP-regulated Processwork therapist, conflict mediator and group facilitator. Her pamphlet Radical Pairings (Ignitionpress, 2023) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award. She's received an Edwin Morgan Second Life Award (2020), the RSL Sky award (2021) for creative nonfiction, and a Hawthornden Foundation Residency, in Bologna, Italy. The Scottish Poetry Library selected her poem 'How to Eat Frogs' for Best Scottish Poems (2021). In 2023, a sequence of her poems was Highly Commended in the Poetry Business’ International Poetry and Pamphlet Competition. Her poetry film, Paradise Engines was commissioned by Scottish Poetry Library and the Obsidian Foundation as part of the Africa in Motion Festival (2021). She writes regular reviews, short-form fiction and nonfiction pieces for WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund. She's a non-fiction editor at Bending Genres and a Lector for the Royal Literary Fund Reading Round (2025) in Edinburgh, where she currently lives.

~~~~~~

Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, two of the three joint winners of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024, are based in Edinburgh.  They will be giving several joint readings in Scotland, starting with a joint launch event for Even the Trees and Belling the Leopard at the Portobello Bookshop in Edinburgh on Thursday 24 September, 7-8pm.  Details below.

'These two debut collections, both winners of the James Berry Poetry Prize, present very exciting and distinct voices. They also complement each other in unexpected ways, which is perhaps a testament to the prize itself as well as its namesake poet. James Berry was well known for his diversity of language and style, and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley and Roshni Gallagher pay tribute to this legacy in their own unique ways, with many particularly Scottish twists throughout.' – Sean Wai Keung, Gutter

~~~~~

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

 

Thursday 24 September, 7pm

Joint Edinburgh launch event for Even the Trees and Belling the Leopard

Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh

Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley celebrate the publication of their brand new collections, Gallagher's Even the Trees and Burnley's Belling the Leopard, with poetry readings and conversation.

More details and booking here. (Livestream and book/ticket bundles available)

Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley are both based in Edinburgh. More details of other planned joint readings in Scotland to be announced.

 

Berwick Literary Festival, Saturday 10 October, 2pm-3.15pm

[07 August 2026]

Back to Poetry Events