clare e. potter is a bilingual poet and performer with an MA in Afro-Caribbean Literature from Mississippi. She lived in New Orleans for a decade and received Arts Council funding to respond to the trauma of Hurricane Katrina alongside a jazz quintet. clare has translated poems by the National Poet of Wales, Ifor ap Glyn, and collaborates with artists to make poetry installations in public spaces. clare was a Hay Festival Writer at Work and has had several poetry residencies including for The Velvet Coalmine Festival, The Landmark Trust, Wales Arts Review, Moravian Academy, Pennsylvania and more recently with Theatr Genedlaethol and Natural Resources Wales.
She won the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry in 2005 and was on BBC4’s Listening Project with her father piecing together the source of emotion in poetry. In 2019 clare directed the BBC Wales documentary The Wall and The Mirror where she collected people’s stories from her mining community. This resulted in a drive to save the significant cultural and political miners’ institute. She has presented several BBC radio programmes including Max Boyce: The Tools are on the Bar; The Poetry of Science; The People’s Poetry; The Poet’s Poet and was Bardd y Mis for Radio Cymru in October 2023. She was featured in an interview with Sean Fletcher for S4C’s Stori’r Iaith. Her second poetry collection will be published with Verve Poetry Press in April 2024 and she is working on a collection of poetry in Welsh.
clare’s biggest passion is working in schools and on community projects with other artists. She is currently mentoring other artists and working on several writing for well-being projects and is studying with Jill Teague via the International Academy for Poetry Therapy.
