Ellora Sutton

Biography

Ellora Sutton is a PhD English candidate at Northeastern University London. Her research uses poetry to look at museums as walkable urban spaces in London, especially for women. The project is both critical (a thesis, looking at poetry by contemporary poets such as Grace Nichols and Dzifa Benson) and creative (a collection of poems), both strands taking Phil Smith’s mythogeography (a heritage-focused grandchild of psychogeography) as framework. She is interested in the spatial and atmospheric arrangements of exhibitions; how meanings and narratives are chosen, told, challenged, layered, and carried; different forms of museum engagement; interactions between museum visitors as part of the museum experience; the representation of women in museums; practice-based research in creative writing; ekphrasis, specifically that which is explicitly situated within the museum; the role of movement in museum experience; the Situationists.

Prior to starting her PhD, she was the Creative Engagement Officer at Jane Austen’s House. She has been the poetry critic for Mslexia since 2021. As a poet, her work has been widely published, both online and in print, including her pamphlet Antonyms for Burial which was the Poetry Book Society Spring 2023 Pamphlet Choice. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Little Bitch, is published in April 2026 by VERVE Poetry Press, and has been described as “sharp, tender, hilarious […] a marvel” by Rachel Long.

Qualifications

Ellora received her MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) from the Open University in 2021, and her BA(Hons) in Journalism and Creative Writing (First Class) from the University for the Creative Arts in 2018. She studied Advanced Poetry at the prestigious Faber Academy on a scholarship in 2021/2022.