Jane Mead

Jane Mead (August 13, 1958 – September 8, 2019) was an American poet and the author of five poetry collections. Her last volume was To the Wren: Collected & New Poems 1991-2019 (Alice James Books, 2019). Her honors included fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations and a Whiting Award. Her poems appeared in literary journals and magazines including Ploughshares,^[1] Electronic Poetry Review, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Antioch Review and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 1990.^[2]

Born in Baltimore, Mead lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until she was twelve. Her father taught ichthyology at Harvard University. After Cambridge, she moved around a great deal with her mother and stepfather, who was a journalist, living in New Mexico, London, and Cambridge, England. She graduated from Vassar College and from Syracuse University and the University of Iowa. She taught and was Poet-in-Residence at Wake Forest University.

After her father died in 2003, Mead managed the family ranch in Napa County, Northern California. She taught at New England College^[3] and co-owned Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Iowa.

Mead died September 8, 2019, in Napa, from cancer.^[4]

• 2017 World of Made and Unmade shortlisted for 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize
• 2004 Ploughshares Cohen Award
• 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship^[5]
• 1992 Whiting Award
• Lannan Foundation Completion Grant^[6]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (April 2023)

Collections

• To the Wren: Collected & New Poems 1991-2019. Alice James Books. 2019. ISBN 978-1-948579-01-8.
• World of Made and Unmade. Alice James Books. 2016. ISBN 978-1-938584-32-9.
• Money Money Money I Water Water Water. Alice James Books. 2014. ISBN 978-1-938584-04-6.
• The Usable Field. Alice James Books. 2008. ISBN 978-1-882295-69-2.
• House of Poured-Out Waters. University of Illinois Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-252-06944-4.
• The Lord and the General Din of the World. Sarabande Books. 1996. ISBN 978-0-9641151-1-8.

Anthologies (edited)

• Jane Mead, ed. (1994). Many and More: A Celebration of Love in Later Life. Timken Publishers. ISBN 978-0-943221-21-2.

Anthologised in

• Melissa Tuckey, ed. (2018). Ghost Fishing : An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820353159.

List of poems

• "An Interview with Jane Mead" > Poetry Daily
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• Poem: "The Origin", poets.org
• Poem: "Alleged Speculation", Electronic Poetry Review
• Poem: "The Specter and His World are One ", Electronic Poetry Review
• Poem: "The High Hither, The Embrace", Electronic Poetry Review
• Poem: "The Part—and the Whole of It", Electronic Poetry Review