Publications and Awards

The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry finalists announced
I’m honoured that Minx is a finalist for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry chosen by judge, Rosanna Warren – especially as I’m alongside my fellow Chatto poet Mona Arshi and Stav Poleg who I met at a fabulous week at Arvon with Michael Schmidt and Sascha Dugdale. Good luck to all the finalists and a huge ‘thank you’ to Rosanna Warren for choosing Minx to be among such a worthy list.


I am one of the winners of the 2026 Dirt Plantable Poetry Competition. Six poets were paired to create three unique poetry responses to a climate science, ecological, paper chosen by the organisers. The result is (the sea within) is a remarkable eco friendly pamphlet that come complete with a packet of seeds. The limited edition pamphlet can be purchased from Dirt Publishing.


Minx has won the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.
The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding debut collection of poetry in the English language. 
It was an honour to be shortlisted alongside Dane Holt:  Father’s Father’s Father (Carcanet Press), Michael Mullen: goonie (Corsair), Abu Bakr Sadiq: Leaked Footages (University of Nebraska Press), Darby Price: All The Lands We Inherit (Black Lawrence Press).

To whet your appetite for a little Minxiness visit the Chatto page, or download the audiobook and have me read it to you. You can also find Minx at… Minx by Karen Downs-Barton | Foyles, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Blackwells,

‘Don’t worry, I’m here in the house where every room has a name, but children’s names are often forgotten’
Heart-breaking yet uplifting, this lyrical evocation of an Anglo-Romani childhood on the edge of society marks the arrival of a vital new voice.
MINX draws us into the vibrant but precarious world of a multi-racial Romani family, whose troubled mother struggles to support her two girls on the proceeds of her shadowy nighttime work. The sisters develop a powerful bond, which helps them survive once they’re taken into care, under the punishing regime of a children’s home that separates them.
Through a series of daring experiments with form and narrative, MINX captures how it feels to be caught between a culture whose traditional ways are being lost and a wider society that despises them. With a verve and playfulness that belies their pain, these poems explore what it means to belong: the search for a language and heritage erratically passed on and the cost of being forcibly assimilated.

  • Didicoy, I’m delighted to announce that Didicoy is the Poetry Book Society recommended pamphlet for summer 23.

It can be purchased through The Poetry Book Society / The Poetry Business / Amazon /  W.H.Smith   / Blackwells 

Link to Wild Court.

This poem uses a form that I working with extensively in my PhD. In it I explore experiential material in both Angloromanes and English.

The Traditions We Bring With Us in a Confluence of Reds and Silks

Winner of the 2021 Cosmo Davenport-Hines poetry competition.

On Seeing Your Clothes On Someone Else

Published by Rattle, this poem with audio clip is taken from my recently completed MA thesis. It highlights the experience of many children taken into state care where personal belongings, like the children themselves, became part of a collective resource.