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"If Jane Holland didn't exist it would be necessary for us to invent her."

Poet, editor and literary commentator, Jeffrey Side

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Main blog photograph courtesy of Chiltern Railways, 2008.

Kissing the Pink

My first novel (Sceptre, 1999)

Boudicca & Co. (Salt Publishing)

The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman

My first poetry collection (Bloodaxe, 1996) out of print but still available from me. Alternatively a revised Second Edition exists as an ebook on Amazon entitled "Disreputable".

'Jane Holland's Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior - of both country and psyche - in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It's a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition.'

Fiona Sampson, Editor of Poetry Review

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On Warwick Castle: a "modernist pièce de résistance" (David Morley) and "one of the more ambitious works of public poetry generated through a local laureateship" (David Floyd, Sphinx 10). Available to buy from Amazon and Nine Arches Press.

Matt Merritt on Jane Holland's LAMENT OF THE WANDERER: 'an original and moving re-imagining of one of the great works of medieval literature.'

Available as a chapbook with Introduction from Heaventree Press, or in CAMPER VAN BLUES (Salt Publishing, 2008).

Email Me

j.holland442@btinternet.com

Boudicca & Co: 'I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric ... There's a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive ... I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.'

Helena Nelson, Ambit 2007

Praise for Boudicca & Co

'Extremely powerful and varied ... Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure ... This collection is outstanding.'

Angela Topping, Stride Magazine, April 2007

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Read "Camper Van Blues"? Review it on Amazon!

Camper Van Blues on Amazon.co.uk

Before the Wrinkles but After the Gregory

'... we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets.'

Simon Turner, Gists and Piths, 2007

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Portrait of a Hustler

I was a world-ranked snooker player in a former incarnation. I still occasionally play pro 9-ball pool.

'Extremism was the last gasp of the Modernist movement ... The stakes now are smaller and poetry is milder, less adventurous.'

Al Alvarez, 'The Writer's Voice' (Bloomsbury, 2005)

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Pollard on 'Boudicca'

"Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of 'ruins under rain,' hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain's fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical."

Clare Pollard, poet

Jane Holland

JANE HOLLAND
Jane Holland

Jane Holland at Dhoon Glen, Isle of Man

Photograph by Roly Drower

'Sleeping with your own muse is an almost unpardonable breach of male literary protocol; but to sleep with a friend's, and tell him about it, is to do him the greatest favour as an artist.'

Don Paterson, The Book of Shadows, Picador 2005

Isle of Man, 2005

'Reading in silence is the source of half the misconceptions that have caused the public to distrust poetry.'

Basil Bunting (1966)

Jane's Pick of the Blogs

The End Times *NEW!
Women Rule Writer *NEW
The Expulsion of the Blatant Beast
David Morley
Sean Costello's Roving Editor
Sparks from Stones
Brando's Hat
Shit Creek Review
Baroque in Hackney
Silliman's Blog
Surroundings (Rob Mack)
Gists and Piths
Poetry in Progress
Poets On Fire

More available to search by autumn 2007: scroll to end of sidebar to see random book covers

Nearby 'Old Nun Wood'

'There are limitations associated with female poets' espousal of the lyric 'I' ... If it is even able to move beyond the specifically personal and individual, it is only allowed to become the voice of a female collectivity.'

Vicki Bertram, Gendering Poetry, Pandora 2005

Other Cool Places To Visit Online

Poets On Fire - FORUM for Live Poetry
Roz Hall, Essex poet - NEW!
Rachel Fox on poetry & life
Heart of Albion Press (folklore & more)
Salt Publishing, Cambridge, UK
Arvon Foundation
Aldeburgh Poetry Festival
Ledbury Poetry Festival
Poetry Library, magazines online
Poetry Society, London
Heaventree Press & Avocado Poetry Magazine, Coventry

'The more women adored poetry, the less able they were to write it.'

Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet by Germaine Greer (Viking, 1995)

Hunting for clues as to when tea will be ready ...

Because Mummy is busy writing again!

Shh, step quietly and follow me ...

French discussion forum

Boudicca & Co.

New poetry by Jane Holland, out now from Salt Publishing.

Click on any title to visit Amazon

'Oyster'

I cruised the coast road alone
that summer; metallic sea
was all I knew, sirocco
blowing hot and southerly.
One afternoon, sweltering
through the low gears
I stopped the car, stared out
from my carapace
and the sirocco blew, wedging
a pearl-like piece of grit
under one stubborn eyelid
blurring the horizon
to an accumulation of light,
a working within, to you
coming to me, triumphantly
prising open the oyster.

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