Jane Fraser Esson Bradley (          -  June 2013)

Jane Fraser Esson was born in New Zealand, and has lived in London since 1967. She has worked as a journalist, and read English at Birkbeck College.  

She is the author of three volumes of poetry:  The Magenta Café (2000, Hub Editions), Old Gold, (1998, Hub Editions), and Between Two Countries, (1998, Autolycus Press).  

Her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies including The Interpreter's House, Envoi, Time Haiku, Orbis, Agenda, Acumen, Iota and Poetry Nottingham.  She has also won commendations and prizes in national competitions.  

Her interests include the arts, travel and environmental issues.

Comments on collections:

The Magenta Café

"...Under the surface of all her work, whether a snapshot of the exotic or an examination of the political, there is a questioning intelligence trying to find a moral sense in her surroundings..."

Roland John, Editor Outposts

"(the poems) are vivid and evocative, as in St Emilion where 'Cream and brown / Parasols droop / Like fading flowers / Over painted tables'.  The author is mistress of the leaping phrase, in Persephone for example, where 'The corn shot gold for joy'...  acutely aware of changes slowly encroaching on old ways of life and religion.  Sometimes this is encapsulated in crisp words, as in Turkish Delight, where 'High-rise hotels / Of diamond-hard concrete / Dwarf the minaret'.  A thought-provoking collection, worthy of much re-reading."

Review:  The Woman Writer, Spring 2001
 

"More than snapshots, but written in admirably spare lines, there is always a nuance of the human situation, often of suffering and the world's wrongs..."

Review:  Anne Born, in Links Magazine, October 2001
 

"(the poet) uses words as skilfully as a master landscape artist uses the exact colours which will depict the lights and shades and life in what he sees...  She has an uncanny gift for evoking atmosphere, as in In a Quaker Meeting, and London Remembers...I cannot be coldly analytical about this book.  There isn't a poem in it I would not love to have written myself! "  

Review:  Dan Pugh, Time Haiku, Spring 2002
 

Between Two Countries

"Jane Fraser Esson's poems show her gift for vivid visual detail expressed in a sensitive evocation of landscapes and places and the people in them.  Her subject-matter ranges widely—from the serious to the wryly understated, making for effective dramatic contrasts"

Katherine Gallagher

request contact with Executor

and in the shop:

in anthology,
"In the Company of Poets"
Hearing Eye Press

© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
site feedback welcome