The River

by Jane Clarke

The textured language, vivid imagery and musical rhythms of Jane Clarke’s debut collection convey a distinctive voice and vision. With lyrical grace these poems contemplate shadow and sorrow as well as creativity and connection. The threat of loss is never far away but neither is delight in the natural world and what it offers. Rooted in rural life, this poet of poignant observation achieves restraint and containment while communicating intense emotions. The rivers that flow through the collection evoke the inevitability of change and our need to find again and again how to go on.

Genres: Poetry, Nature

64 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2015

About the author

Irish poet Jane Clarke grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon. Her first collection, The River, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. It was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, given for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place. In 2016 she won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. She was awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Literary Bursary in 2017.

All the Way Home, Jane’s illustrated booklet of poems in response to a First World War family archive held in the Mary Evans Picture Library, London, was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2019, and was followed by her second book-length collection from Bloodaxe, When the Tree Falls. Jane also edited Origami Doll: New and Collected Shirley McClure (Arlen House, 2019), and guest-edited The North 61: Irish Issue (The Poetry Business, 2019) with Nessa O’Mahony.
Jane was born in 1961 and grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon.

She lives with her partner in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow, where she combines writing with her work as a creative writing tutor and group facilitator. She holds a BA in English and Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin, and an MPhil in Writing from the University of South Wales, and has a background in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stand-out poems, the rest competent filler.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adored this. Love the way she writes about loss - her father’s death, but also infertility, the turning of the seasons. Pitch perfect domestic scenes between her parents. And there’s something in the way she writes about women: mothers, nuns, girls on the boat. One to savour and, if you’re a writer, use as a standard.

[Deborah Adelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these poems.

[Sher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Jane Clarke's work-- poems with such perfect tone --- set in rural places-- poignant and striking-- my favorite poet of 2021.

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, simple, moving, pure.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The other night, I attended an event where Irish poet Harry Clifton spoke of the official and approved poetic tradition in Ireland, a tradition which is rooted in rural Ireland and Nature.

Jane Clarke writes within that tradition.

Many of the poems in the first half of the book were simple celebrations of the specific. The poems in the second half, which I found most moving, often were about the decline of her parents and memory.

[Gareth Culshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

great debut...a new Irish voice. very strong in the messages. good craft and beautiful sounds.