Biography
The virtues of Jane Clarke's writing include a broad sympathy that never usurps the voice of the other, that guides the reader to understanding and respect; a pleasure in ingenious objects and crafts that is deftly transmitted; and a clarity which does not deny mystery but makes room for it.
- Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, former Ireland Professor of Poetry.
Jane Clarke grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and now lives with her wife in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow. Her first collection The River was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. Her second collection When the Tree Falls was published by Bloodaxe Books in September 2019. All the Way Home, an illustrated sequence of poems in response to a soldier's letters from the Front during World War 1, was published by Smith|Doorstop in April 2019, in collaboration with the Mary Evans Picture Library, London. Her third collection A Change in the Air was published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2023.
Jane third collection A Change in the Air was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Poetry Prize 2023, the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023 and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2024, as well as being longlisted for the 2023 Laurel Prize for nature and ecopoetry. Jane's second collection When the Tree Falls was shortlisted for the Pigott Prize 2020, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2020 and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2020. It was longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2020, the annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place. 'Copper Soles' from When the Tree Falls was one of the highly commended poems in The Forward Book of Poetry 2021.
In 2016 Jane won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry with three poems from The River, 'For Isobel', The Blue Bible' and 'Every Tree'. She also won the inaugural Listowel Writers' Week Irish Poem of the Year in the Irish Book Awards 2016. The River was the first poetry collection ever to be shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize, given for a distinguished work of fiction or non-fiction evoking the spirit of a place. She was also included in Poetry Ireland Reviews's 2016 Rising Generation Issue.
Jane received the Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Award 2022. Previously, she won the Listowel Writers' Week Poetry Collection Prize 2014 and the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland Competition 2014. She also won the Poems for Patience Competition 2013, the iYeats International Poetry Competition 2010 and Listowel Writers' Week Originals Competition 2007.
Her poems have been published in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, The Herald (Scotland), The Scotsman, The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, The Simple Things, NB Literary Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, New Hibernia Review, Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine, The Stinging Fly, The North, The Rialto, Poetry Wales, Rattle, Banshee, Acumen, The Compass Magazine, Agenda, Butcher's Dog, Books Ireland, Bookanista, One Poetry Journal, Prelude, Abridged, Elementum Journal of Nature Writing, Poethead, The Irish Literary Review, Orbis, Ambit, Mslexia, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, One, Southword Journal , THE SHOp, Cyphers, Crannog, HIVE, An Irish Journal of Nature Poetry, Skylight 47, Galway Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Revival, The Ogham Stone, Roundwood & District Historical, Folklore & Archeological Society Journal and Boyne Berries.
Jane's poems feature in numerous anthologies: Soul Feast (Bloodaxe Books 2024); Flora/Fauna Volume 1 (Open Shutter Press, 2024); Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Ireland, 2023); I Am the Wind: Irish Poems for Children Everywhere (Little Island, 2023); The Forward Book of Poetry, 2024 (Forward Arts Foundation 2023); River Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series 2022); Vital Signs: Poems About Illness And Healing (Poetry Ireland 2022); Beyond Their Limits of Longing: Contemporary Writers and Veterans on the Lingering Stories of WW1 (Mispeak 2022);100 Queer Poems (Penguin 2022); Chasing Shadows Poetry Anthology (Creative Ireland 2022); Where the Birds Sing Our Names (Seren Books 2021); Queering the Green (The Lifeboat Press 2021); Of Claws and Hooves and Meadows; 12 Poems for One Welfare (Science Foundation Ireland 2021); Dream of the River (Jacar Press 2021); Empty House (Doire Press 2021); Days of Clear Light (Salmon Poetry 2021); Staying Human (Bloodaxe Books 2020); One for Everyone: More Poems I Love compiled by Kathleen Watkins (Gill Books, 2020); Poems from Pandemia (Southword editions 2020); Correspondences, an anthology to call for an end to direct provision (The Stinging Fly 2019); Future Perfect, fifty award-winning poems selected from entries to the Trócaire and Poetry Ireland Competitions 2012-2019 (Poetry Ireland 2019); Spaces of Longing and Belonging, Territoriality, Ideology and Creative identity in Literature and Film (Brill Rodopi 2019), Reading the Future, New Writing from Ireland (Arlen House & Hodges Figgis, 2018); New Roscommon Writing 2014-2018 (Roscommon County Council 2018); Metamorphic: 21st century poets respond to Ovid (Recent Work Press, 2017); Washing Windows? Irish Women Write Poetry (Arlen House, 2017); Tokens for Foundlings Anthology (Seren Books, 2012); The Roscommon Anthology (Roscommon Literary Heritage Group, 2013); the 2009, 2012 & 2014 Fish Anthologies and in the English & Spanish editions of IB Theory of Knowledge Course Book (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3, RTE Lyric FM and on RTE Radio 1's Countrywide, Sunday Miscellany, Arena, The Poetry Programme and Poetry People. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian and Romanian. Poems from The River are displayed in Galway University Hospital and The Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo. 'In Glasnevin', a poem from When the Tree Falls is featured in Croíthe Radacacha/Radical Hearts, a documentary exploring the hidden lives of eight female couples at the heart of the Irish Revolution. 'In Glasnevin' is read during tours of Glasnevin Cemetery at the grave of Elizabeth O'Farrell and Julia Grenan. Jane has undertaken numerous commissions for public bodies in Ireland.
Jane edited Origami Doll, New & Collected Shirley McClure (Arlen House 2019) She co-edited, with Nessa O'Mahony, the Irish issue of the prestigious UK poetry journal, The North, Issue 61, January 2019. She co-edited with Gerry Boland the inaugural Roscommon Broadsheet, Autumn Leaves 2020. She has performed her work extensively at festivals, readings and concerts throughout Ireland and in England, Wales, France, Spain and the US. In 2009 Jane was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. She was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council in 2017 & 2021 and an Artists' Support Bursary by Wicklow County Council in 2009 & 2019.
Jane attended Fuerty National School, the Convent of Mercy, Roscommon and won an Irish scholarship to the Lester B. Pearson United World College on Vancouver Island, Canada. She holds an Honours Degree in English and Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin and an MPhil in Writing from the University of South Wales. She has a diploma in action research from the University of Bath and a diploma in group analytic psychotherapy from the Institute of Group Analysis, UK. She worked in community development, adult education and psychotherapy in Dublin. For the past thirty years she has lived with her wife in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow.