Jen Hadfield reads in Grasmere

Jen Hadfield won the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize with her second collection, NIGH-NO-PLACE. In this short video she reads four poems from the book, beginning with the title-poem 'Nigh-No-Place', followed by 'In the same way', 'Daed-traa', and then 'Paternoster', the Lords Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. The film shows excerpts from her Wordsworth Trust reading St Oswald's Church, Grasmere, Cumbria, on 30 June 2009 (when she read in the Dove Cottage series with George Szirtes). The language of Jen Hadfields poetry is one of incantation and secular praise. Her first book, ALMANACS (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), was a travellers litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. NIGH-NO-PLACE (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world. As well as winning her the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2009 - when she became the youngest poet, at 30, ever to win Britain's biggest poetry prize - NIGH-NO-PLACE was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Jen Hadfield is half Canadian, and lives in Shetland (the remote group of islands north of Scotland and north of Orkney) where she works as a poet, writing tutor and artist. She recently received a Dewar Award to produce a solo exhibition of Shetland ex-votos in the style of sacred Mexican folk art. For more information, see:
http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247932

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Entertainment

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• Jen Hadfield
• poetry
• Bloodaxe Books
• Wordsworth Trust

[kathyh1956]

Lovely lady, lovely poetry