Irish poet Jane Clarke is the author of three poetry collections and two poetry booklets. Her three collections were published by Bloodaxe Books, The River in 2015, When the Tree Falls in 2019 and A Change in the Air in 2023.
Jane's third full-length collection A Change in the Air was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Poetry Prize 2023, the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023, the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2024 and longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2023 for nature & ecopoetry.
In 2016 The River was the first poetry collection ever shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Award, given for a distinguished work of fiction or non-fiction evoking the spirit of a place. When the Tree Falls was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize 2020, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2020 and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2020 as well as being longlisted for the Royal Society for Literature Ondaatje Award 2020. 'Copper Soles' from When the Tree Falls is one of the highly commended poems in the Forward Book of Poetry 2021.
All the Way Home, a sequence of poems responding to a First World War family archive in the Mary Evans Picture Library, London was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2019.
Coracle, a limited edition booklet of ten poems responding to biodiversity loss and restoration was commissioned and published by MoLI, Museum of Literature Ireland in 2023.
Jane edited the illustrated anthology, Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Books Ireland, 2023) as well as Origami Doll, New & Collected Shirley McClure (Arlen House 2019).
Jane received the Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Award 2022. In 2016 she received the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry with three poems from The River. She also won the inaugural Listowel Writers' Week Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2016.
Originally from a farm in Roscommon, Jane now lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow. She gratefully acknowledges the Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Award 2017, 2021 & 2024. She also acknowledges the generous support of Wicklow County Council Arts Office and Culture Ireland.
Clear, direct, lovely: Jane Clarke’s voice slips into the Irish tradition with such ease, it is as though she had always been at the heart of it.
– Anne Enright, Laureate for Irish Fiction.
Jane reads and talks about her poem ’Swim’ from When the Tree Falls, celebrating her friendship with fellow poet Shirley McClure, who died from cancer in 2016.