Jane Clarke grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon, and lives with her partner in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow, and is the author of two full-length collections of poetry. Her debut, THE RIVER, published by Bloodaxe in 2015, was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2016, given for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place. Also in 2016 she won Ireland’s Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry. Hers is a distinctive voice and vision, notable for the textured language, vivid imagery and musical rhythms of her poetry. Her lyrically eloquent poems bear witness to the rhythms of birth and death, celebration and mourning, endurance and regrowth. An elegiac sequence, inspired by the loss of her father, moves gracefully through her second collection, WHEN THE TREE FALLS, out from Bloodaxe in 2019. Rooted in the everyday and backlit by mystery, here are poems to savour and return to, for the pleasure of finely honed lines that powerfully evoke the depth of our connections to people, place and nature. For more details of both of her Bloodaxe collections, please see: bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/jane-clarke
Neil Astley filmed her reading selections from both of her collections at her home in Glenmalure in April 2019. Here she reads and introduces six poems from THE RIVER: ‘Daily Bread’, ‘The Blue Bible’, ‘Vows’, ‘Who owns the fields’, ‘On the Boat’ and ‘The River’. A second video of her reading from WHEN THE TREE FALLS can be seen here: vimeo.com/330973184
