'A Change in the Air by Jane Clarke is a collection that deals with contemporary and historic rural life in Ireland, in particular its crafts and traditions. Set against accounts of queer love in a changing Ireland, these poems are musical, moving and true; each word chosen with deep care, each phrase made with a craftswoman’s precision.' – Jessica Traynor, for the Forward Prize 2023 Judges

‘Jane Clarke writes poems of lyrical beauty and real heart. Rich with the tradition of Irish pastoral or nature poetry, a whole landscape can live inside one of her carefully tuned lines. But from the rich soil of tradition, Jane brings forward a poetry that is subtly changed, alert to political and social issues and fraught as nature writing so often is now with anxieties about the changing climate. In Jane's poems, we can hear echoes of voices past and present, the farmlands of Seamus Heaney, the lyricism of Kerry Hardie. And there's also a melodic sense of nature in all its fine detail, a chorus made by water, growth, diversity, precious and under threat. And if that wasn't enough, there's always a strong emotional core too: love, desire, hurt, and comfort. All of these can be found in her poems.’ – Seán Hewitt, introducing Jane Clarke on The Glimpse podcast

'The title of Jane Clarke’s A Change in the Air rather neatly conjures the country dweller’s sensitivity to the slightest shift in the weather, literal or figurative, meteorological or emotional. Though she may be influenced by Patrick Kavanagh, by Ted Hughes, and by Alice Oswald, Jane Clarke manages to plow her own furrow in poems of farm and family life that are notable for their attentiveness to, and delight in, the telling detail.' – Paul Muldoon (with Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul), T.S. Eliot Prize 2023 judges' comment

Jane Clarke was born in 1961 and grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon. Since 1996 she has lived with her wife in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow, where she combines writing with her work as a creative writing tutor and group facilitator. Her first collection The River, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015, was the first poetry title to be shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. In 2016 she won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. Her second book-length collection, When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2020 Pigott Poetry Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2020. A Change in the Air (Bloodaxe Books, 2023), was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023 for nature and ecopoetry, and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023, the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023 and Ireland's Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2024.