Jennie Osborne
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I wrote and read incessantly as a child and teenager, strongly influenced by Dylan Thomas, the Liverpool poets and the lyrics and rhythms of rock and folk music. Once I married and started work, life got in the way for twenty years, and it wasn't until my early forties, in Cornwall, that I started writing again, eventually bringing out my first collection with Oversteps Books in 2010, How to be Naked. This was followed by Colouring Outside the Lines in 2015.
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Both collections stretch borders, look at the world from unexpected angles. How to be Naked focuses more on the personal with themes of time, memory and relationship. Colouring Outside the Lines engages more with the wider world, a political and environmental perspective interwoven with the personal and the surreal.
My latest collection, Signals From the Other, published by Dempsey and Windle, explores our relationship with the other-than-human; animals, as individuals and species, plants and the whole planetary ecosystem, as well as our perception of the ‘something beyond’ that we call spiritual. The imminent climate and environmental catastrophe is present, explicitly or as a silent backdrop, in all these poems.
Much of my work has involved collaboration with visual artists and musicians, and in 2022/3 I have a series of events planned with jazz and improvising musicians, including working as part of the Day Evans Dale Ensemble, live and on a recording for the Discus record label, as well as performances with my own poetry/music band, Crow Country. The Smallest Monkey in the World, one of the poems from Signals From the Other, can be heard, performed by Crow Country.
I have been a member of Moor Poets since its inception and feature in its four anthologies. Alongside being part of Poetry Teignmouth's steering group team, I am a workshop leader and Poetry School tutor, and a sought-after live performer.
Website: www.poetrypf.co.uk/jennieosbornepage.shtml
Signals From the Other is available from dempseyandwindle.com at £10.50 or from myself.
Colouring Outside the Lines is available from overstepsbooks.com/poets/jennie-osborne/. or from myself
My latest collection, Signals From the Other, published by Dempsey and Windle, explores our relationship with the other-than-human; animals, as individuals and species, plants and the whole planetary ecosystem, as well as our perception of the ‘something beyond’ that we call spiritual. The imminent climate and environmental catastrophe is present, explicitly or as a silent backdrop, in all these poems.
Much of my work has involved collaboration with visual artists and musicians, and in 2022/3 I have a series of events planned with jazz and improvising musicians, including working as part of the Day Evans Dale Ensemble, live and on a recording for the Discus record label, as well as performances with my own poetry/music band, Crow Country. The Smallest Monkey in the World, one of the poems from Signals From the Other, can be heard, performed by Crow Country.
I have been a member of Moor Poets since its inception and feature in its four anthologies. Alongside being part of Poetry Teignmouth's steering group team, I am a workshop leader and Poetry School tutor, and a sought-after live performer.
Website: www.poetrypf.co.uk/jennieosbornepage.shtml
Signals From the Other is available from dempseyandwindle.com at £10.50 or from myself.
Colouring Outside the Lines is available from overstepsbooks.com/poets/jennie-osborne/. or from myself
CLOSE TO THE WIND
Young, and not yet grown
into the way of hawk,
three gapes open in not-knowing,
blood-instinct under their tongues,
their yellow claw-fingers grasp air,
itch for rabbit-neck.
They have been named in the old language,
as if that charm would keep them
through all odds,
named Ghost, Light, Sky,
to breathe height into their wings,
been braceleted with numbers
to count the days of their passage,
the days of their deaths.
And they will be launched forth,
pushed into air as seal into water,
into unarmoured air that offers
no refuge, into the sights
of shotguns
the harriers harried, brought low
with lead, leaving their plotted tracks
to those who collect knowledge
no legacy to their own kind,
thrust in their turn
into the spring breeze on the Carneddau,
none except an impression
of tail feather dipping into cloud,
an almost-call at the edge of hearing,
awyr golau ysbryd
sky light ghost.
Young, and not yet grown
into the way of hawk,
three gapes open in not-knowing,
blood-instinct under their tongues,
their yellow claw-fingers grasp air,
itch for rabbit-neck.
They have been named in the old language,
as if that charm would keep them
through all odds,
named Ghost, Light, Sky,
to breathe height into their wings,
been braceleted with numbers
to count the days of their passage,
the days of their deaths.
And they will be launched forth,
pushed into air as seal into water,
into unarmoured air that offers
no refuge, into the sights
of shotguns
the harriers harried, brought low
with lead, leaving their plotted tracks
to those who collect knowledge
no legacy to their own kind,
thrust in their turn
into the spring breeze on the Carneddau,
none except an impression
of tail feather dipping into cloud,
an almost-call at the edge of hearing,
awyr golau ysbryd
sky light ghost.