Roscommon poet Jane Clarke’s third collection, A Change in the Air, is on the shortlist for the prestigious TS Eliot Prize, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
The TS Eliot Prize is the most valuable in British and Irish poetry and is the only major poetry prize which is judged solely by established poets. The prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland, with former winners including Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Carol Ann Duffy.
A Change in the Air, published in May, is also shortlisted for the coveted Forward Prize for Best Collection, the winner of which will be announced on the 16th of October at a ceremony in Leeds.
The judges for the TS Eliot Prize 2023 are Paul Muldoon, Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. On behalf of the judges, Paul Muldoon said: “We are confident that all ten shortlisted titles not only meet the high standards they set themselves but speak most effectively to, and of, their moment. If there’s a single word for that moment it is surely ‘disrupted’, and all these poets properly reflect that disruption”.
Jane grew up on a farm in Fuerty and attended the Convent of Mercy in Roscommon. She studied and worked in Dublin for fifteen years and now lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow. She began to write poetry in her early 40s and believes poetry is for everyone. Her accessible, moving poems celebrate the beauty and resilience of the natural world while reflecting on the loves and losses of everyday life.
