Elizabeth Jennings

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This article is about the English poet. See Lizzie Jennings for the American civil rights figure of the same name.

Elizabeth Joan Jennings (July 18, 1926 – October 26, 2001) was an English poet, noted for her clarity of style and simplicity of literary approach. Her Roman Catholicism coloured much of her work. She always made it clear that, whilst her life, which included a spell of severe mental illness, contributed to the themes contained within her work, she did not write explicitly autobiographical poetry.

She was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, but her family moved to Oxford when she was six. There she later attended St Anne's College. After graduation, she became a librarian.

She is not generally regarded as an innovator. Her work displays a simplicity of metre and rhyme that she shares with Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn, all members of the group of English poets known as The Movement.

Her works include An Anthology of Modern Verse 1940–1960 (1961), and a revised and updated collection, Collected Poems 1953–1985, (1986) that won the 1987 WH Smith Literary Award.

She is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford.