Jane Clarke was raised on a farm in Fuerty, County Roscommon, Ireland. She earned her BA in English and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and her MPhil in Writing from the University of South Wales. She worked in community development and psychoanalytic psychotherapy for many years before beginning to write poetry.
Clarke’s debut poetry collection, The River (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), was the first work of poetry to be shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. Bloodaxe has put out two other collections of Clarke’s work, When the Tree Falls (2019) and A Change in the Air (2023). When the Tree Falls was shortlisted for the 2020 Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, and the Pigott Poetry Prize, and A Change in the Air was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Clarke won the 2016 Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry, the 2017 Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary, and the 2022 Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Award. She lives with her wife in Glenmalure, County Wicklow, Ireland.
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Photo by Linda O'Hanlon.