For Paula Jennings, poems mostly started as an image or phrase, rather than an idea. She sometimes even used the sounds of poems in unfamiliar languages as vehicles to surprising destinations.
Critics commented on ‘the assured and innovative way she handled language’, her ‘fine musical ear’ and ‘willingness to take risks’, her poetry’s ‘otherworldly delicacy’. She enjoyed working across art forms and had fruitful collaborations with visual artists. She was always aware of the closeness between life and death, the continuing presence of a spiritual dimension.
Her work appeared in literary magazines, national newspapers and anthologies over many years. It was translated into Polish, broadcast on radio and carved in stone. She performed widely, including three readings for StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival. She was awarded Scottish Arts Council Writers’ Bursaries and Hawthornden Fellowships.
She worked with poetry students individually and in poetry writing workshops. She also used poetry in creative sessions with people with dementia, sometimes making collaborative poems that spoke vividly of living in other dimensions. Under a Spell Place offers some examples of the 'found' work developed in this way.
She was a wholly dedicated poet, working without fuss to make the best poems she could, and generously supporting others in developing their own aspirations.
In 2023, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She died peacefully in early June 2024. You can read about the story of her final book here: http://blog.sphinxreview.co.uk/2024/05/06/how-does-the-miracle-occur/
Publications:
- This is You, Dear Stranger, Red Squirrel, 2024
- Under a Spell Place, HappenStance, 2015
- From the Body of the Green Girl, HappenStance Press, 2008
- Singing Lucifer, Onlywomen Press, 2002/2007
Poems in anthologies
- One Foot on the Mountain: An Anthology of British Feminist Poetry 1969 to 1979, ed. Lilian Mohin, Onlywomen Press (1979)
- Such Strange Joy: Ten Years of Shore Poets, Ed. Allan Crosbie, inyx publishing (2001)
- Lament: Scottish poems for funerals and consolation, Scottish Poetry Library 2005
- Skein of Geese: Poems from the 100 Poets Gathering, StAnza 2007, StAnza/the Shed Press (2008)