Jane DraycottFRSL is a Britishpoet, artistic collaborator (sound montages, etc) and poetry translator.[1] She was born inLondon in 1954 and studied atKing's College London and theUniversity of Bristol.[2] Draycott's fifth collectionThe Kingdom was published in 2023 byCarcanet Press.
Draycott teaches as Senior Associate Tutor on Oxford University'sMSt in Creative Writing, and until 2022 was Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University as well as a mentor on the Crossing Borders[3] creative writing initiative, set up by theBritish Council and Lancaster University. In addition to her work at Oxford and Lancaster, she wasRoyal Literary Fund Fellow atOxford Brookes University 2004-06, as well as atAston University in 2010-12 andRoyal Holloway University of London 2021-22. In 2014-16 she was aRoyal Literary Fund [RLF] Lector, becoming an Advisory Fellow in 2018 and appointed as an RLF Associate Fellow in 2022.
Draycott's translation work[4] includes a poetic version of the 14th century elegy ''Pearl'' - aStephen Spender Prize-winner in 2008[5] - and a collection of new translations of the 20th century artist and poetHenri Michaux ''Storms Under the Skin'' (aPoetry Book Society Recommended Translation) published in 2017 byTwo Rivers Press. In 2013, Draycott was Writer-in-Residence hosted by theDutch Foundation for Literature in Amsterdam, researching poetMartinus Nijhoff's modernist Dutch narrativeAwater.[6]
Draycott was previously poet in residence at Henley's River and Rowing Museum, creating a millennium archive of audio interviews with the men and women working on the London Thames. She has recorded a number of her poems for ThePoetry Archive[7] and is one of the poets featured in the nationalPoetry By Heart anthology.[8]
Settings to music of Draycott's poems have included a setting for the award-winning choirTenebrae by composerJoanna Marsh of'In Winter's House' (originally commissioned as part of laureate Carol Ann Duffy's 'Carols for Christmas' forThe Guardian December 2010), premiered at theWigmore Hall in December 2019.
Her collaborative work includes two collections from Two Rivers Press:Christina the Astonishing (1992), co-written with poet Lesley Saunders and illustrated by artist Peter Hay; andTideway (2002), a sequence of poems written as part of a project with photographer Jaap Oepkes, documenting the lives ofLondon's Company of Thames Watermen and women, with artworks by artist Peter Hay (both collections republished in 2022 in theTwo Rivers Classics series). Her poem from this collection, 'No. 3 fromUses for the Thames', was shortlisted for the 2002 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and features in thePoems on the Underground 2016 series 'London is Open'.
Other collaborative work includes several award-winning sound-compositions with poet Elizabeth James (Sea Green I and II - winner ofBBC Radio 3 Poem for Radio 1998;A Glass Case for BBC R3Between the Ears (1999), produced by Susan Roberts; andRock Music for LBC radio, winner of a London Sound Art Award 2000, produced by Richard Shannon).
In 2010, Draycott was part of Simon Barraclough'sPsycho Poetica, a collaborative multi-media event launched at theBritish Film Institute for the 50th anniversary ofAlfred Hitchcock's seminal thriller, and in 2013 was one of ten poets commissioned by Barraclough for his BFI collaborative projectPoets on Pasolini: A New Decameron. Her poem 'Who keeps observance in the fever room?' fromJulia Bird's 2015Beginning to See the Light event at London's South Bank has been made intoa film by filmmaker Corinne Silva.
Draycott's debut poetry pamphletNo Theatre (Smith/Doorstop, 1997) was shortlisted for theForward Prize for Best First Collection, and her first full collectionPrince Rupert's Drop[9] (OUP andCarcanet Press, 1999) was shortlisted two years later for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
In 2002 she was the winner of theKeats-Shelley Prize for Poetry[10] with the title poem of her second collection,The Night Tree, and in 2004 she was nominated as one of thePoetry Book Society's'Next Generation' poets. In 2009, her collection ''Over'' was nominated for theT S Eliot Prize, and in 2016 her next collectionThe Occupant was selected as aPoetry Book Society Recommendation.[4]
Draycott has served on judging panels for a number of literary prizes, including theT S Eliot Prize, the Society of Authors'Vondel Prize for translation, the Edward Thomas Prize, The Troubadour International Poetry Prize, the Tower Poetry Competition (Christ Church Oxford), and all three of the UKPoetry Society's National Poetry Competition, Foyles Young Poets Awards, and Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.
In 2020 Draycott was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature[11] and in 2023 was awarded aSociety of Authors Cholmondeley Award.
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