The Kingdom

The Kingdom of Jane Draycott's fifth collection is clearly a world we know, altered a little by Draycott's distinctive, prismatic lyricism, whose loving attention to place and our moment is skewed in a way that opens the world afresh. Here are England's towns and countryside, roads and ports and sushi chains, yards and herbs, an airport and a columbarium, and poems that consider art in a time of plague by way of meditation on Titian, Apollinaire and Derek Jarman.

Jane Draycott was born in London and is the author of eight collections of poetry and poetic translation, including No Theatre (Smith/Doorstop, Forward Prizes shortlist) and Prince Rupert's Drop (Forward Prize for Best Collection shortlist), Over (T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist) and The Occupant (PBS Recommendation), all from Carcanet Press. A 2004 Next Generation poet, her several awards include a Stephen Spender Prize for her Carcanet translation of the medieval dream-elegy Pearl, as well as the Keats Shelley Prize for Poetry and the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. Her collaborative work includes, with poet Lesley Saunders and artist Peter Hay, two illustrated collections Christina the Astonishing and Tideway, both re-issued from Two Rivers Press in 2022. She teaches on postgraduate writing programmes at the universities of Oxford and Lancaster and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.