Jane Draycott was born in 1954 and studied at King’s College, London, and then Bristol University, where she studied for a postgraduate degree in Medieval English Literature. She is a TS Eliot Prize shortlisted poet, and has been nominated for the Forward Prize three times. Draycott won the Keats-Shelley prize in 2002, and in 2004 she was named as a Next Generation Poet. The Poetry Book Society has recommended two of her volumes, Prince Rupert’s Drop and The Night Tree.
Alongside her ‘page’ poetry, Draycott also works actively in sound and audio art, often working collaboratively. With sound artist Elizabeth James, Draycott has won the BBC Radio 3 Poem-for-Radio and a London Sound Art Award for her aural collages of words and music.
Draycott has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Lancaster and Reading, among others, and, in 2010, is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Aston University.
In 2011, Carcanet / Oxford Poets will publish Draycott’s interpretation of the medieval narrative poem Pearl, which earned her a 2008 Stephen Spender prize. “The language of Pearl is marvellously modulated yet stirringly wild. Draycott has carried over into our tamer, tired world a strong, strange sense of how original, gorgeous and natural this old poem can be.” (Poetry Review)
Poet Sean O’Brien has written, “Jane Draycott’s imagination is large and extremely detailed. Her writing benefits from a blessed refusal to view ideas and feelings as separate realms.” And about her volume Tideway, specifically, he wrote, “A mesmeric and thrilling body of work. Tideway deserves a wide readership.”
Her most recent collection is Over, which was nominated for the TS Eliot Prize in 2009.
Bibliography
No Theatre, Smith/Doorstop, 1996
Christina the Astonishing (with Lesley Saunders, images by Peter Hay), Two Rivers Press, Reading, 1998
Tideway (with paintings by Peter Hay), Two Rivers Press, Reading, 2002
Prince Rupert’s Drop, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999; Carcanet/OxfordPoets, Manchester, 2004
The Night Tree, Carcanet/OxfordPoets, Manchester, 2004
Over, Carcanet/OxfordPoets, Manchester, 2009
Pearl: A Translation, Carcanet/OxfordPoets, Manchester, forthcoming 2011
Links
Jane Draycott is published by Carcanet, and Two Rivers Press.
See Jane Draycott’s personal website here, including poetry, audio extracts and poetry and film collaborations.
Jane Draycott is one of the judges of the 2010 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. Read Jane Draycott’s tips for younger poets .
