A Change in the Air

Jane Clarke

From Shelf: T.S Eliot Poetry Prize shortlist 2023

Jane Clarke's third collection is far-reaching and yet precisely rooted in time and place, exploring how people, landscape and culture shape us. Voices of the past and present show courage in the face of poverty, prejudice, war and exile and everyday losses in what is essentially a book of love poems to our beautiful, fragile world.

Jane Clarke's third collection is far-reaching and yet precisely rooted in time and place. In luminous language her poems explore how people, landscape and culture shape us. Voices of the past and present reverberate with courage and resilience in face of poverty, prejudice, war and exile and the everyday losses of living. Across six sequences these intimate poems of unembellished imagery accrue power and resonance in what is essentially a book of love poems to our beautiful, fragile world. A Change in the Air follows Jane Clarke's widely praised previous collections The River (2015) and When the Tree Falls (2019).