Kerry is a poet and creative writing lecturer whose research and teaching is broad-reaching. As a teacher, he facilitates writing from first-year undergraduate level to PhD, and has taught writers such as Lottie Hazell, Anna Loughran, Sarah Ann Juckes and Caspar Wort. His approach to writing is accessible and supportive, often focussing on professional development and encouraging students to be aware of their creative skills. He has been nominated for several awards and won the ‘Extra Mile’ award for his work with MA students.
As a writer he is a widely-published poet, whose work has been published in India, Romania, France and Spain as well as the UK. He is currently working on his debut novel.
Kerry also contributes expertise to literature organisations: he was on the board of Apples and Snakes for fifteen years, and is now a trustee of the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.
Other public-facing work has included speaking at a conference on Afghanistan Futures at the Houses of Parliament, appearing on BBC Radio Four’s ‘Take Four Books’, and working with Writing East Midlands on co-hosting the East Midlands Writers’ Conference.
For the last twelve years he has run the Overton Poetry Prize, which has attracted entrants from all over the world, and seen pamphlets published by Natalie Moores, Carol Rowntree Jones and Sarah James, among others.
Kerry has several research interests, reflected by conference papers and research publications over the last few years. These include contemporary landscape poetry, French culture, language and history, and representations of Afghanistan. These are also apparent in his creative work, which has been published in anthologies and international journals, including poetry in translation from French, poems about British and French landscapes and Afghanistan.
Kerry’s teaching is mostly in Creative Writing; he runs workshops at every level of undergraduate study on the BA in English and Creative Writing, as well as on the MA in Creative Writing. He specialises in teaching the writing of poetry and the use of location in writing, as well as professional development for writers. He also contributes a lecture on writing male mental health to the undergraduate modules Maladies and Medicines and on the weird crime fiction of Fred Vargas on literature from 1990 to the present.
Current:
- Anna Loughran: Searching for Eliza: a creative-critical thesis on writing trans histories and afterlives.
- Izzie Radley: The Ghost in the Sign: A Creative Approach to Ghost Signs
- Caspar Wort: I Speak to You: The Nature of the Speaker and Addressee in Contemporary Poetry
Recent completions:
- Lottie Hazell, “Swallowing feelings: Examining disclosure in contemporary food-centric fiction” 2023
- James Barker, “The Things Which No One Can See”, 2023
- Demi Wilton, “Environmental Displacement and World Literature”, 2024
- Louise Goswell, “Untangling SOE Narratives Through Historiographic Metafiction”, 2024
- Beller A-M, Featherstone K - Pastor of Marston M. E. Braddon's "Unknown" Novella in Le Figaro: Edward Everett Root Publishers 15 Oct 2025
- Beller A-M, Featherstone K - ‘Permission to go and see the ancient city’: women travellers’ encounters with Islam in the nineteenth century
- Beller A-M, Featherstone K - Islam and Muslims in Victorian Britain: New Perspectives. Gilham J. 90-114. Bloomsbury Publishing 14 Dec 2023
- Featherstone, K - Launderette with Single Figure
- Featherstone, K - "We're All In It Together: Poems for a Disunited Kingdome" Grist, 2022