Jenny Joseph (Jenny Jenefer Ruth Joseph) Biography

British poet, born in Birmingham, educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has worked as a journalist and as a lecturer in adult education. The Unlooked-For Season, her first collection of verse, appeared in 1960. She produced no further volumes until Rose in the Afternoon (1974), which was followed by The Thinking Heart (1978), Beyond Descartes (1983), Beached Boats (1991), Selected Poems (1992), and Ghosts and Other Company (1995). Much of her poetry strikes an unusually effective balance between its qualities of statement and its carefully observed imagery. Her work is also notable for its witty and energetic sense of philosophical enquiry into everyday events. Persephone (1986), her experimental fiction in prose and poetry, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; the Greek myth provides a basis for a complex treatment of self-discovery and the relations between mother and daughter. She has also written numerous books for children.