Change in the Air

Jane Clarke was born in 1961 and grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon. She lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow, where she combines writing with her work as a creative writing tutor and group facilitator, and has a background in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. 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. All the Way Home, her 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. Her second book-length collection, When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2020 Pigott Poetry Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2020, as well as being longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize 2020. In May 2020 she presented The Miners' Way, a half-hour feature for Radio 4 that was chosen for Radio 4's Pick of the Week. This included a new sequence of poems as well as one from When the Tree Falls. Her third book-length collection, A Change in the Air (Bloodaxe Books, 2023) was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023. It is on the shortlist for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023.

The poems are plain-spoken and restrained: they resist easy consolation. Their austerity serves to intensify the unmediated emotion they almost don’t want to capture… a poem might be born of personal loss, but, once completed and published, it has entered a different timespan, and becomes the forge where other minds are shaped and brightened.

• 10 After11 Butter for Queens12 Raspberries13 District Nurse14 Dressing My Mother for Her Grandson’s Wedding15 Given16 Becoming17 All the horses she’s ever loved18 Eggs19 All she needed20 Milk21 The Lookout22 The ArchPIT PONIES OF GLENASAN25 Christmas Morning26 Pit Ponies of Glendasan27 The Pay28 MullacorWHEN ALL THIS IS OVER31 September 191432 In the dugout33 The Game34 After we’re gone35 Bouchavesnes36 Priam of Troy37 Ling38 When all this is over39 Snow40 PianistYOU COULD SAY IT BEGINS42 You could say it begins44 Crossings45 Flight47 Family Bible48 When the sun51 The Dipper52 Lazy Beds53 skein54 Passage55 Wildfire56 Rowan57 Refuge58 Recipe for a bog59 spawn60 At Purteen Harbour61 Little Tern Colony, Kilcoole63 Mater Misericordiae64 The Key65 Spalls66 Her first67 Wife68 Ballinabarney69 First Earlies70 Shepherd71 Fences72 Thief in April73 Stepping in74 June76 Notes78 Acknowledgements