County Roscommon native launches fourth poetry collection

Fuerty native Jane Clarke’s fourth collection or poetry, 'Coracle', has been published in the UK and Ireland by Bloodaxe Books.

Jane told the Roscommon Herald that there are poems from all around the country in the collection but the first sequence is very much based in and around Fuerty, the farm of her childhood and the nursing home in Cloverhill where her mother receives very good care.

There is also a poem inspired by a visit to Tommy Earley, Farming for Nature Ambassador and an organic farmer in North Roscommon.

Jane will launch 'Coracle' at the Dublin Book Festival on November 8th and at Bridge Street Books in Wicklow on November 19th with a US tour to follow in early 2027.

'Coracle' follows Jane’s much-lauded third collection, 'A Change in the Air', which was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the TS Eliot Prize in 2023 as well as Ireland's Farmgate Café National Poetry Award in 2024. It was longlisted for the 2023 Laurel Prize for nature writing and ecopoetry.

This new collection also has the natural world at its heart, with the poet increasingly alert to the fragility of nature in the face of biodiversity loss and climate change. Human fragility also features in a series of moving portraits of the poet’s mother.

Another series of poems is inspired by women's lives from the fifth century through famine and revolutionary times to contemporary Ireland.

Jane Clarke grew up on a farm in Fuerty and now lives in County Wicklow.