Poet-in-Residence
Poets in Residence
With the support of Arts Council England, the Wordsworth Trust residency scheme has been supporting writers for 15 years. Poets at a crucial stage in their career are given a stipend and the use of a cottage around the corner from Dove Cottage, where William Wordsworth lived when he wrote much of his greatest poetry. Here, they are given time and space to develop their craft.
Our poet-in-residence is Emma Jones.
Emma was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. Her first collection of poems, The Striped World, was published by Faber in February this year. The book featured on BBC's Late Review in December, and has garnered universal praise for its assured originality.
She began writing poetry from a young age. In 2005 she won the Newcastle Poetry Prize, Australia's largest prize for a single poem, and she has been the 
recipient of an emerging writer's grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. She recently completed a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge.
Jones has lived in Germany, Italy and America, and says she is looking forward to settling down for a year in one of poetry's spiritual heartlands. 'The most wonderful gift anyone could give me is the time and space to just bunker down and focus on writing. This is what the Wordsworth Trust is offering me, and I couldn't be more excited. The fact that it's in a natural environment that's so beautiful, and in a cultural environment that's so supportive of poetry and the arts, is a wonderful bonus. I'm sure that my time there will be deeply enriching for my work.'
Emma's The Striped World has been shortlisted for the 2009 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The results are announced on 7th October. Click here for further information.
Read Equator by Emma Jones.
Emma will be reading during our Poetry in Grasmere 2009 series on Tuesday 8 September, 2009. Click here to find out more.
