News
A Change in the Air, Jane's third full-length collection published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2023, is on the five-strong shortlist for the £10,000 Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023. The Forward Prizes are among the most prestigious and influential prizes for poetry in the UK and Ireland. The winners of this year's Forward Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Leeds Playhouse, as part of Leeds 23, on 16 October 2023. Full details of all the shortlisted books and poems are on the Forward Prize website here.
Ahead of the publication of the Windfall Anthology of Irish Nature Poetry (Hachette Ireland 2023), Jane recommends five anthologies of nature poetry on the Shepherd.com website.
A Change in the Air was longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2023, an annual award for the best collection of nature or environmental poetry.
Jane has a new poem in Issue 140 of Poetry Ireland Review, edited by Annemarie Ní Churreáin. 'Witness' is one of three poems inspired by the life of Jennie Wyse Power, a member of the Ladies Land League and Cumann na mBan.
A Change in the Air was reviewed by Martin Dyar in the current issue 140 of Poetry Ireland Review. 'The delight and haunting memorability of the elegies that open her third book of poems, A Change in the Air, can partly be explained by an ability to turn moment of steady objectivity into disclosures of emotion and insight...'
A Change in the Air was reviewed by Martina Evans in the Irish Times, Saturday 19 August 2023. 'In Jane Clarke's A Change in the Air her characteristic style is more pared back than ever ...a subtle collection.'
A Change in the Air was reviewed by Steve Whitaker in the Yorkshire Times online on 28 July 2023. 'What animates Jane Clarke are love and endurance: artfully calibrated, each section of A Change in the Air is an emotional complement to the next...' Read the full review here.
A Change in the Air was reviewed by Eleanor Hooker in the Books Ireland online poet on poet review series: "...outstanding lyrical poems of place and heart...A Change in the Air is a generous collection by a poet resolute but gentle in the matter of emotional truth." You can read the full review here.
Poem of the Week: Jane's poem 'Pit Ponies of Glendasan' from A Change in the Air featured in the Scotsman Magazine on 3 June 2023. "This week's poem is by the Irish poet Jane Clarke. Her work has a clarity and precision to it, a matter-of-factness that helps give form to the depth and weight of the words, which explore everyday living, past and present, and what shapes us as humans."
Bookanista featured two poems online, 'Her first' and 'Wife' to mark the publication of A Change in the Air on 25 May 2023. You can read the feature here.
A film of Jane reading her poem 'Dressing My Mother For Her Grandson's Wedding' featured on Books Ireland on 24 May to mark the publication of A Change in the Air. You can watch it here.
On RTE Radio 1's Countrywide, Saturday 27 May 2023, Jane read 'Butter for Queens', a poem from her new collection A Change in the Air (Bloodaxe Books). You can listen back here.
'All the Horses She's Ever Loved', a poem from A Change in the Air was Poem of the Week in The Irish Times on Saturday 20th May 2023. You can read it here.
A Change in the Air had its Bloodaxe Books online launch on 23 May, hosted by editor & poet Neil Astley. You can watch it back here. Jane had in person launches in Dublin, Wicklow and London.
RTE Radio 1's Countrywide interviewed Jane for a special programme about the rivers of Co. Wicklow on Saturday 29 April. Jane read three poems from her new collection and spoke about Wicklow's biodiversity and how living there has inspired her writing. You can listen back to the full programme here and here.
'Dressing My Mother For Her Grandson's Wedding', from A Change in the Air features in the current issue of BANSHEE literary journal.
'After', the opening poem in A Change in the Air features in the current issue of the US poetry journal Rattle. You can read it here.
Dublin Book Festival interviewed Jane ahead of her sell-out event at the National Botanic Gardens in February 2023. She talks about her forthcoming collection with Bloodaxe Books, A Change in the Air. You can read the feature here.
'Recipe for a bog', a poem from Jane's sequence of poems inspired by the Avonmore River, features in the special Eavan Boland edition of Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 38. This poem will also feature in Jane's forthcoming collection with Bloodaxe Books, A Change in the Air.
On RTE Radio 1's CountryWide, 21 January 2023, Jane read her poem 'The Yellow Jumper' from When the Tree Falls. You can listen back here.