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 Cafe 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.
