We are delighted to announce the winner of the PBS & Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Prize. Jane Lovell's This Tilting Earth was hailed by judge Amy Wack of Seren Books as "...haunting and memorable... its concerns are both urgent and universal. It is also a thing of exceptional beauty."
Jane Lovell’s poems are both beautiful and disturbing. A deep feeling for the natural world is aligned with an acute lyric sensibility, as well as a profound ethical awareness of our responsibility for the planet and the devastation of its landscapes and vulnerable species. With a delicacy and rhythm that is mesmeric, Lovell places each word as a seed with the intent to sow a deeper awareness – so very needed in this time of grave ecological uncertainty. These poems read as a roll-call of loss; of creatures, of species and their landscapes; of our own human innocence degraded through cultural and scientific pursuits that have picked the earth clean of its once-teeming life. With scientific precision, Lovell binds together parcels of the lost, lifts them from the silts of a too-swiftly forgotten history, and gives them voice.
– Autumn Richardson
Jane Lovell’s poems are crafted with a jeweller’s precision. They make visceral connections with the wild in a language all of her own.
– James Roberts
The Pamphlet Prize Judge and Seren Editor Amy Wack also commended several other pamphlets: Mr and Mrs Andrews Livign the Dream by Lesley Burt, Mrs Darwin's Egg by Fiona Cartwright, and Canal Water by Desiree Seebaran.
Jane Lovell has been widely published in journals and anthologies. She won the Flambard Prize in 2015 and has been shortlisted for several awards including the Basil Bunting Prize, the Robert Graves Prize and Periplum Book Award. Her work is steeped in natural history, science and folklore but is essentially poetry that examines our relationship with the Earth and the vulnerability of its wildlife. Her pamphlets have been published by Against the Grain Press, Night River Wood and Coast to Coast to Coast. She also writes for Elementum Journal.
This Tilting Earth is available to order now through our website here.