Elizabeth Joan Jennings (18 July 1926 – 26 October 2001) was a British poet. She won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1955 for her second poetry collection, A Way of Looking.

Life and career Elizabeth Jennings was born at The Bungalow, Tower Road, Skirbeck, Boston, Lincolnshire, younger daughter of physician Henry Cecil Jennings (1893–1967), MA, BSc (Oxon.), MB BS (Lond.), DPH, medical officer of health for Oxfordshire, and (Helen) Mary, née Turner.The Medical Officer, index to vol. CXVIII, July to December 1967, p. 327. When Elizabeth was seven years old, her family moved to Oxford, where she remained for the rest of her life.Couzyn, Jeni (1985), Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, pp. 98–100. There, she later attended St Anne's College. After graduation, she became a writer.

Jennings's early poetry was published in journals such as Oxford Poetry, New English Weekly, The Spectator, Outposts and Poetry Review, but her first book of poems was not published until she was 27. The lyrical poets she cited as having influenced her were Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden, Robert Graves and Edwin Muir. Her second book, A Way of Looking (1955), won the Somerset Maugham Award and marked a turning point, as the prize money allowed her to spend nearly three months in Rome, which was a revelation. It brought a new dimension to her religious belief and inspired her imagination.

Regarded as traditionalist rather than an innovator, Jennings is known for her lyric poetry and mastery of form. Her work displays a simplicity of metre and rhyme shared with Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn, all members of the 1950s group of English poets known as The Movement. She always made it clear that, while her life, which included a spell of severe mental illness, contributed to the themes contained within her work, she did not write explicitly autobiographical poetry. Her deeply held Roman Catholicism coloured much of her work.

She had difficulty managing the practical aspects of her career and life. She became impoverished and struggled with mental health, and her personal difficulties tarnished her critical reputation. When she was honoured by the queen in 1992, Jennings wore a "knitted hat, duffle coat, and canvas shoes". The tabloid newspapers mocked her as "the bag-lady of the sonnets", and the unfortunate description stayed with her.

Jennings spent the later years of her life in various short-term lodgings and in Unity House (8 St Andrew's Lane) in Old Headington. She died in a care home in Bampton, Oxfordshire, at the age of 75. She is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford.

Her life and career were reviewed in 2018 by Dana Gioia, who said: "Despite her worldly failures, her artistic career was a steady course of achievement. Jennings ranks among the finest British poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She is also England's best Catholic poet since Gerard Manley Hopkins."

The first biography of Jennings was published by Oxford University Press in 2018, entitled Elizabeth Jennings: The Inward War, written by Dana Greene.

Selected honours and awards 1953: Arts Council of Great Britain Prize for the best first book of poems for Poems 1955: Somerset Maugham Award for A Way of Looking. 1966: Richard Hillary Memorial Prize for The Mind has Mountains 1987: W.H. Smith Literary Award for Collected Poems 1953–1985 1992: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 2001: Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Durham University

Publications

Poetry collections Poems. Oxford: Fantasy Press, 1953 A Way of Looking. London: André Deutsch, 1955 A Sense of the World. London: André Deutsch, 1958 Song For a Birth or a Death. London: André Deutsch, 1961 The Sonnets of Michelangelo (translated by Jennings). London: Folio Society, 1961; revised edition, Allison & Busby, 1969. Edited by Michael Ayrton, Carcanet Press, 2003. Recoveries. London: André Deutsch, 1964 The Mind has Mountains. London: Macmillan, 1966 The Secret Brother and Other Poems for Children. London: Macmillan, 1966 Collected Poems 1967. London: Macmillan, 1967 The Animals' Arrival. London: Macmillan, 1969 Lucidities. London: Macmillan, 1970 Relationships. London: Macmillan, 1972 Growing Points. Cheadle: Carcanet, 1975 Consequently I Rejoice. Cheadle: Carcanet, 1977 After the Ark. Oxford University Press, 1978 Selected Poems. Cheadle: Carcanet, 1979 Winter Wind. Sidcot: Gruffyground Press, 1979 Moments of Grace. Manchester: Carcanet, 1980 Celebrations and Elegies. Manchester: Carcanet, 1982 Extending the Territory. Manchester: Carcanet, 1985 In Shakespeare's Company. The Celandine Press, 1985 [limited edition 250 copies] Collected Poems 1953-1985. Manchester: Carcanet, 1986 An Oxford Cycle: Poems. Oxford:Thornton's, 1987 Tributes. Manchester: Carcanet, 1989 Times and Seasons. Manchester: Carcanet, 1992 Familiar Spirits. Manchester: Carcanet, 1994 In the Meantime. Manchester: Carcanet, 1996 A Spell of Words: Selected Poems for Children. London: Macmillan, 1997 Praises. Manchester: Carcanet, 1998 Timely Issues. Manchester: Carcanet, 2001 New Collected Poems. Manchester: Carcanet, 2001 Elizabeth Jennings: The Collected Poems. Manchester: Carcanet, 2012 Father to Son: Poem

Selections and anthologies edited by Jennings The Batsford Book of Children's Verse (illustrated). London: Batsford, 1958 An Anthology of Modern Verse: 1940-1960. London: Methuen, 1961 Wuthering Heights and Selected Poems by Emily Brontë. London: Pan Books, 1967 A Choice of Christina Rossetti's Verse. London: Faber and Faber, 1970 The Batsford Book of Religious Verse. London: Batsford, 1981 A Poet's Choice. Manchester: Carcanet, 1996

Criticism "The Difficult Balance". London Magazine 6.9 (1959): 27–30 "The Restoration of Symbols: The Poetry of David Gascoyne". Twentieth Century 165 (June 1959): 567–577 Let's Have Some Poetry! (for children). London: Museum Press, 1960 "Poetry and Mysticism: on re-reading Bremond". Dublin Review 234 (1960): 84–91 "The Unity of Incarnation: a study of Gerard Manley Hopkins". Dublin Review 234 (1960): 170–184 Every Changing Shape: Mystical Experience and the Making of Poems. London: André Deutsch, 1961; Manchester: Carcanet, 1996, Poetry Today (British Council and National British League). London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1961 "Emily Dickinson and the Poetry of the Inner Life". Review of English Literature 3.2 (April 1962): 78–87 Frost (Robert Frost). Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964 Christianity and Poetry. London: Burns & Oates, 1965 Reaching into Silence: a study of eight twentieth-century visionaries. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974 Seven Men of Vision: an appreciation. London: Visa Press, 1976 "The State of Poetry". Agenda 27.3 (Autumn 1989): 40–41

References

External links

Elizabeth Jennings Project. Profile and works. Profile and poems (audio) at the Poetry Archive Elizabeth Jennings Papers at Burns Library, Boston College Elizabeth Jennings archive at University of Delaware Elizabeth Jennings archive at Georgetown University "The Poetry of Elizabeth Jennings", Poetry Nation No. 5, 1975