Ledbury Poetry Critics Report 2025

Since the 2017 launch of the Ledbury Poetry Critics programme clear progress has been made in increasing the diversity of poetry reviewing. In the intervening eight years, thirty LPCs in the UK, and several associated critics in sister programmes in the US and Ireland (headed by Vidyan Ravinthiran at Harvard University and Catherine Gander at Maynooth University) have significantly contributed to a new critical conversation about poetry and race through writing reviews, editing at newspapers and magazines and, in many cases, publishing their own poetry collections. In 2020, LPC was awarded funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to continue intensive mentoring of critics and editor-in-residence positions at major publications in the UK, US and Ireland. Through annual residencies and, latterly, Hawthornden Trust funded curatorial positions at Ledbury Poetry Festival, the LPCs have spearheaded the visibility of poets of colour and critical conversations about their work. When the programme was founded, poetry reviewing was dominated by white, male critics. Statistical analysis by Dave Coates made this abundantly clear and continues to provide crucial evidence for enormous shifts that the programme (and other diversity initiatives) has brought to poetry’s publishing and reception. We are grateful to all who have supported the programme over the past eight years, including our mentors, advisers, editors, Ledbury Poetry festival, the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing, funders and multiple collaborators across the Atlantic and beyond. Most of all, we are acutely aware that without the Ledbury Critics and their brilliant work the programme would never have achieved the change we collectively hoped for in poetry’s critical cultures.

This 2025 Ledbury Critics report analyses 38 poetry magazines, websites and newspapers from the UK and Ireland in a single year (2024) to establish how the landscape has changed since our last report in 2020. This analysis considers over 3000 poems and more than 700 reviews.

Although this study is a one-year snapshot it is clear there are more POC poets and critics achieving publication in the UK and Ireland than ever before, a positive trend that began shortly after the establishment of the Ledbury Poetry Critics and following ten years of The Complete Works mentorship scheme for poets of colour (2007-2017), founded by Bernardine Evaristo and directed by Dr Nathalie Teitler.

We are, as ever, hugely encouraged by the achievements of Ledbury fellows, such as Isabelle Baafi, Reviews editor at Poetry London, Jade Cuttle’s monthly poetry review column at The Observer, and an array of accomplishments in poetry publishing, including several full-length collections. What this report establishes, however, is the widespread publication of critics of colour out with the Ledbury network; only 26 of the 74 articles by critics of colour in 2024 were by Ledbury fellows and mentors. This is a strong indication that the work of cultivating POC writers and networks is being carried on beyond the programme.