Poet - Singer-songwriter - Teacher
Jenny Lewis trained as a painter before reading English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and gaining an M.Phil in Poetry from the University of Glamorgan. She has been a singer-songwriter, an advertising copywriter, a children's author, playwright and screenwriter, a teacher and a civil servant. Lewis currently lives in Oxford, where she teaches poetry at Oxford University.
Her poetry collection, Fathom, was published by Carcanet Press in May 2007, and the text of her play After Gilgamesh was published by Mulfran Press in 2011.
Jenny has recently retired from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and has now moved on to set up a new venture, Oxford Writing and Training, which aims to provide a range of courses for everyone interested in extending their creative writing and written communication skills; she also undertakes freelance creative writing workshops.
Taking Mesopotamia
Jenny's next poetry collection, Taking Mesopotamia, is based on her father's role in the Mesopotamian Campaign of WWI. It has been accepted for publication in early 2014 by Oxford Poets/ Carcanet.
Mother, one of the poems from the collection, was first published in The Oxonian Review. Jenny was delighted with its translation into Arabic by Marga Burgui-Artajo. You can hear that version, read by Iraqi poet, Adnan al Sayegh, elsewhere on this website.
Spring 2012 teaching programme
In addition to her weekly poetry classes (which are currently fully booked, but it is possible to join the waiting list) Jenny will be offering three day-svhools in the first part of the year: see her programme for details. She will also be tutoring a residential course on the pleasures of poetry at the beautiful and historic Missenden Abbey (details).
Jenny receives extremely positive feedback from her teaching: here are some of the comments from students on her Approaches to Poetry class in the OU Summer Programme 2011.
- "Excellent. Once again I learned from a master!" (from a student from Germany who came back as she had so enjoyed Jenny's last course)
- "The most wonderful class environment I've ever experienced."
- "Jenny is a wonderful teacher, this course was a great experience."
- "The best poetry course I've ever done! Jenny was fantastic and welcoming. The quality of work all round was exceptional as was the feedback and criticism."
Hawthornden Fellowship
Jenny was delighted to be offered a Hawthornden Fellowship for 2012: this enables her to go and live (with four other writers) at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland for a month on a writing retreat.
The Fellowship was established in 1982 to provide a peaceful setting where published writers can work without disturbance. The Retreat houses five writers at a time, who are known as Hawthornden Fellows.. Writers from any part of the world may apply for the fellowships. No monetary assistance is given, nor any contribution to travelling expenses, but once arrived at Hawthornden, the writer is the guest of the Retreat. Previous winners include: Les Murray, Alasdair Gray, Helen Vendler, Olive Senior and Hilary Spurling.
Jenny will spend the month of June at Hawthornden. She plans to spend the time translating more of The Epic of Gilgamesh. She says"I might be tempted to walk in the Scottish countryside and write what comes, I'll have to see. But I am very thrilled and axcited about it."
Previously...
In a new feature on this website, Jenny has started an archive of news stories which have been pushed down the front page by the arrival of more up-to-date news, but which provide a valuable record of her past work, and contain all sorts of interesting pictures and press cuttings (not to mention the poems!).
You'll find the news archive here, or behind the "Previously" button in the menu.
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Last update: 2nd March 2012