Award-winning poet and novelist Jane Holland is Warwick Poet Laureate, 2007-08, and the editor of new literary magazine Horizon Review (Salt Publishing). Her latest publication is THE LAMENT OF THE WANDERER (a new version of the Anglo-Saxon poem) from Heaventree Press, Coventry. For the latest news, visit her blog at http://rawlightblog.blogspot.com Jane Holland was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1966. She is the daughter of best-selling novelist Charlotte Lamb and classical biographer Richard Holland, moving with them to the Isle of Man in 1977, where she lived for 23 years before returning to mainland Britain. From 1989-1995, Jane Holland played snooker on the women's professional circuit, rising to 24th in the world, but retired from the game after a dispute with her local governing body in 1995. She began writing poetry the same year and won an ERIC GREGORY AWARD from the Society of Authors in 1996. She founded BLADE in 1995, described by Neil Astley as 'one of Britain's gutsiest poetry magazines', and edited the magazine for nine issues until 1999. Her first collection of poetry - THE BRIEF HISTORY OF A DISREPUTABLE WOMAN - was published by Bloodaxe in 1997. The same year, she performed on the New Blood UK Tour with fellow Bloodaxe poets Roddy Lumsden, Julia Copus, Tracey Herd and Eleanor Brown. Jane Holland's second poetry collection, BOUDICCA & CO, was published by Salt Publishing in 2006. Her latest publication is a chapbook edition of THE LAMENT OF THE WANDERER (a new version of the Anglo-Saxon poem, with facing-text Anglo-Saxon, due out June 2008), available from Heaventree Press, Coventry. Jane's first novel, KISSING THE PINK, came out with Sceptre in 1999 while she was at Brasenose College, Oxford, reading English as a mature undergraduate. Her poetry, reviews and critical articles have subsequently appeared in many UK journals, including Poetry Review, Acumen, Poetry London, The North, Mslexia, Stand, Thumbscrew, London Magazine, The London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. She has run poetry workshops for adults and children, and has tutored for the Arvon Foundation alongside Alan Brownjohn. Anthologies where her work has been featured include Bloodaxe's MAKING FOR PLANET ALICE and NEW BLOOD, Picador's ALL THE POEMS YOU NEED TO SAY I DO, edited by Peter Forbes (2004), NOT JUST A GAME, edited by Sue Dymoke & Andy Croft (Five Leaves Publications, 2006), and BE MINE, an anthology of love poems edited by Sally Emerson (Little Brown 2007). Jane Holland edits Horizon Review, a brand-new online literary journal from Salt Publishing, and also administers the Poets on Fire blogsite and discussion forum. Her third poetry collection, CAMPER VAN BLUES, is due to be published by Salt in autumn 2008. She lives in Warwickshire, England, with her partner and five children, where she very much misses being able to write within sight of the sea. Visit Jane's Warwick Poet Laureate blog at http://warwicklaureate.blogspot.com To read more about Horizon Review, visit http://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/issues/01/index.htm * Jane Holland's second full-length collection of poetry, BOUDICCA & CO., is published by Salt. 'Extremely powerful and varied ... Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure ... This collection is outstanding.' Angela Topping, Stride Magazine, April 2007 'I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric ... There's a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive. I didn't for one moment think about feminist directions -- only the inner rage of the emotion, the amazing sweep of the imagery and the way I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled. In her first poetry collection, nine years ago, Holland wrote (in 'Not a Love Poem') "Write me a line that cuts straight to the bone." She has written a great many such lines here -- and they are very, very scary.' Helena Nelson, Ambit 2007 "Jane Holland's Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior - of both country and psyche - in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It's a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition." Fiona Sampson, Editor of Poetry Review "Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of 'ruins under rain,' hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain's fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical." Clare Pollard, poet '... we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets.' Simon Turner, Gists and Piths, 2007 " 'the grip/ of the wheel, a licence to roam.' Jane Holland's poetry smoulders and blazes. Take your deepest breath, and go with her." Alison Brackenbury, poet "Jane Holland modernises myths and mythic characters, and so achieves a kind of resonant timelessness in poem after poem." Brendan Kennelly, poet Visit Salt Publishing for some brand-new free PODCAST recordings by Jane Holland from her new book BOUDICCA & CO, plus a short video interview: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844712893.htm * This site last updated June 12th 2008