Carcanet Press Poetry Publisher - Elizabeth Jennings (1926

Elizabeth Jennings was born in Lincolnshire in 1926 and spent most of her life in Oxford. Her first book won a Somerset Maugham Award, and many distinctions followed, among them the W.H. Smith Award (1987) and a C.B.E. Over the last twenty years Carcanet has published many of her books including Selected Poems, Collected Poems, Tributes, Times and Seasons, Familiar Spirits, In the Meantime, Praises, her translations of Michelangelo's Sonnets, her critical meditation Every Changing Shape and her anthology A Poet's Choice. She died in 2002.

Her most recent collection was New Collected Poems 2002.

'[A] fine poet who ... manages to build the richest of poems from the barest of methods' - The Times, 14/12/75 '[A] subtle and remarkable poet ... how accomplished she is' - Alan Bramjohn, Encounter, Jan 1980 'the outstanding thing about Jennings's poetry is its wisdom, hard-earned from grief and religious faith' - Douglas Dunn, Glasgow Herald, 15/5/82 'in an era dominated by vacuous verbiage, such poetry as Elizabeth Jennings continues to produce is indeed a triumphant anomaly.' - David Gascoyne, The Tablet, 14/9/85 'She is one of the few living poets one could not do without.' - Peter Levi, The Spectator, 19/10/85 (on Collected Poems): 'it contains some of the finest lyric poetry of the 20th century' - Anne Stevenson, The Sunday Times, 14/9/86 'she has shown herself to be a poet who really has a personal vision along with the gift for making it immediate and shareable' - Kingsiey Amis, The Spectator, 6/12/86 'Elizabeth Jennings is a highly original and sensitive poet, greatly undervalued' - Robert Collie, Gay Times, Feb 1989 'in an agnostic age it is daring to write poems of religious rhapsody and more daring still to write as if the making of poems were a sacred activity.' - James Aitchison, Glasgow Herald, 7/5/89 'one of contemporary English poetry's major sublunary assets' - Will Eaves, The Times Literary Supplement, 15/1/93 'Her poetry ... conveys a strength of feeling and sincerity that few contemporary poets can match.' - Tom Velickovic, The Bookseller, 16/9/94 'a pleasure, as well as a poetic education, to read' - Gwyneth Lewis, Poetry Review, Volume 84 no 4, Winter 1994 'Elizabeth Jennings is a wonderful poet.' - Hugh Bredin, Fortnight 'she writes with a clear-eyed, simple tenderness which is never mawkish and reminds me of the great 17th-century poet, George Herbert' - Vernon Scannell, The Sunday Telegraph 'She's a major poet of our time' - Germaine Greer

Elizabeth Jennings (1926 - 2001)