Cathernet's Influence On Jane Jennings

Encouraged various near –contemporary poets, undergraduates at the time. The influence of her early work can be felt in the apprentice work of Alan Brwonjohn and of Anthony Thwaite who in reviewing her Collected Poems called her ‘ one of the two best living English poets under forty- five.’the other was Larkin. (Schmidt
346-47)
Jennings met several women poets during this time including Anne Ridler, Adrienne Rich, and Kathleen Raine. Anne Ridler had shown a great interest in her work and she wrote an introduction to Poems (1953), her first book of poems. She discussed with Kathleen Raine her view of poetry as a sacred vocation, and noted: “her ideas of God were rather different from mine as a Catholic. (“Autobiography” 73)
During the four months she spent in Italy. In 1957, Jennings wrote many of the poems included in the next two volumes: A Sense of the World (1958) and Song for a Birth or a Death (1959) Several of these poems enact the relationship between the speaker and various friends she met in Rome. “A Conversation in the Gardens of the Villa Celimontana, Rome” for instance, which is written “For A,” is a poetic depiction of the situation described in the
An anthology which brought together the poetry of John Holloway, Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn, Kingsley Amis , D.J. Enright , Donald Davie , John Wain and Conquest himself. This anthology was reviewed widely.” Jennings writes: “but I myself, did not particularly care for being forced into a group which, although I admired the work of many members of it , I did not feel I really belonged” (92)
By July, 1957, Jennings had her third book of poetry ready “and it was to be called A Sense of the World, entitled from the quotation from Traherne: ‘ it becometh you to retain a glorious sense of the world’ (139) She was now planning a prose book which was to be “a study of the relationship between mystical experience and the making of poetry” (140), an interest which developed out of many conversations with her friend Father Aelwin, who encouraged her to read Trahern’s Centuries of Meditations. (140) Her next book Ever Changing Shape is about poets and mystics provides insights into a large number of poems which explore the relationship between the making of poetry and the practice of