Jane Holland
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Jane Holland (born November 1966 in Barkingside, Essex) is an award-winning English poet, performer and novelist whose poems have been widely published in magazines and broadcast on the radio. The daughter of the romantic novelist Sheila Ann Mary Coates Holland (Charlotte Lamb) and the classical biographer Richard Holland, she won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors for her poetry in 1996.
She edited the small poetry magazine 'Blade' from 1995 - 1999, and published her first full-length collection of poetry in 1997, The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, with Bloodaxe Books, followed in 1999 by a first novel, Kissing the Pink, with Sceptre. She was also one of five young Bloodaxe poets who performed on the New Blood UK Tour of 1997; the other poets involved were Roddy Lumsden, Julia Copus, Tracey Herd and Eleanor Brown.
Jane Holland is the Warwick Poet Laureate for 2008. She runs the Poets On Fire website and forum. She is also a prominent member of the Birmingham-based performance poetry and spoken word group New October Poets. In 2006 she was named one of the top poetry performers in the West Midlands under the 'Six of the Best' scheme.
Holland's first collection was in the mainstream British tradition, generally as a 'nature' poet rather than an urban stylist, citing Ted Hughes as a major early influence. Recent work includes a long narrative poem sequence written in the voice of Boudicca.
Her latest collection (2006) is Boudicca & Co. from Salt Publishing.
[edit] Works
- The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman (1997)
- Kissing the Pink (1999)
- Boudicca & Co. (2006)
