The creative environment at King’s was essential for developing the formal experimentation and modes of expression at the heart of MINX. This memoir-in-poetry portrays lives between cultures and languages. MINX takes readers on a journey with a multi-racial Romani family, moonshine brewing grandparents, reggae parties, and a mother using ‘the oldest profession’ to support her children, before losing them to the care system. Notions of belonging are explored through new poetic modalities to express these underrepresented histories.
Karen Downs-Barton, graduate of the Phd in Creative Writing Research
09 April 2025
Creative Writing graduate releases debut poetry collection
MINX, a collection of poetry by Karen Downs-Barton, graduate of the PhD Creative Writing Research programme in the Department of English, launched at the London Review Bookshop on 8 April.
Downs-Barton’s collection MINX explores the world of a multi-racial Romani family and the bonds that help the children to survive. Asking what it means to belong, Downs-Barton’s work experiments with form and narrative to capture the experience of growing up in a culture losing its traditional ways.
I feel so proud that our PhD in Creative Writing has been able to nurture a project as vital and remarkable as Karen’s first collection: to support wide-reaching work like this is why our programme was established. In her time with us, Karen took Minx from a tentative outline to a brilliantly realised set of poems that gives voice to characters and issues that are scarcely heard in British literature, creating as skilful and compassionate a first collection as I’ve ever encountered.
Benjamin Wood, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing
Downs-Barton graduated from the Creative Writing PhD programme in 2023.
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Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing