Jane Hirshfield reviews for The Asking
'These poems, new and selected over decades, have not wandered far from their eternal theme of being human. Hirshfield doesn’t veer away but hones in on the minutiae of everyday life [...] The world is heavy but the lightness of being is extraordinary in Hirshfield’s hand. However insignificant we are in size and time, her poems encourage us to live and celebrate.' – Roy McFarlane, PBS Selector, Poetry Book Society Spring Bulletin 2024, on The Asking: New & Selected Poems
American poet Jane Hirshfield has been published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books since 2005. In March 2024 Bloodaxe published The Asking: New & Selected Poems (US, Knopf, 2023; UK, Bloodaxe Books, 2024), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. This draws upon books including her earlier UK retrospective, Each Happiness Ringed by Lions: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), and four subsequent collections published by Bloodaxe in the UK: After (2006), Come, Thief (2012), The Beauty (2015) and Ledger (2020), along with a selection of 29 new poems.
In July 2024 Jane Hirshfield became the first American and the first woman to receive the Zhongkun International Poetry Prize at a ceremony held at the 2024 Sino-American Poetry Festival at Peking University in China. The International Poetry Prize is given to poets whose work is deemed to have profound connotations and humanistic values, and whose Chinese translation has had a significant impact on contemporary Chinese poetry.
'Jane Hirshfield's poetry emerges from a deep mixing of language, ideas, and sounds that join us, in often unknowable ways, across oceans and centuries … Hirshfield’s poetry is imbued with the lingering aftertaste of yi jin: the unique and lasting emotional and intellectual resonance that is left by a great poem or work of art … Woven from collective traditions and personal insights, her poetry serves as a tether transcending boundaries, bringing us to the deep Pacific Basin of shared poetics.' – Citation from the Zhongkun Poetry Prize jury
Jane Hirshfield launched her new retrospective The Asking online at Bloodaxe's reading and discussion event on 19 March 2024. Scroll down to view the video of this excellent joint event with Maria Stepanova and her translator Sasha Dugdale.
REVIEW COVERAGE
Jane Hirshfield's The Asking: New & Selected Poems was very well reviewed in the June 2024 issue of Australian Book Review.
'Poised between loss and gain, restraint and directness, Hirshfield’s poems never rush towards closure or pretend to know. Instead, they are oriented towards witnessing and porousness, and dedicated to expressing the questions humanity faces.' – Felicity Plunkett, Australian Book Review, on The Asking
Available in full online by subscription here.
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
London Grip, online 1 July 2024
American poet Jane Hirshfield’s new retrospective The Asking: New & Selected Poems was given a detailed review online in London Grip on 1 July.
THE ASKING: Alwyn Marriage reflects on this generous selection from Jane Hirshfield’s work
https://londongrip.co.uk/2024/07/london-grip-poetry-review-jane-hirshfield/
The Friday Poem, online 24 May 2024
An in-depth review of Jane Hirshfield’sThe Asking: New & Selected Poems went online in The Friday Poem on 24 May.
‘This book is the summit of all her questions and looking, all her continuing asking [...] Hirshfield is bearing witness, looking outwards beyond herself. Even if you only have time to dip, to pick out a few poems, this collection will repay your efforts. You might even feel that one of the more important tasks on your to-do list is to read the whole volume.’ – DA Prince, The Friday Poem
https://thefridaypoem.com/the-asking-jane-hirshfield/
The High Window, Summer issue, online 14 May 2024
Jane Hirshfield’s up-dated retrospective The Asking has been very warmly reviewed online in the summer issue of The High Window. Peter Bennet’s 2023 Nayler & Folly Wood, also an up-dated retrospective, was well reviewed in the same issue.
‘Hirshfield is a delight of the measured and meditative [...] Hirshfield is a rewarding poet and one with which to take your time. She is as careful on these pages as she is when she reads. There are many recordings online to get the measure of her voice, and this is helpful, but mostly, hold her in your hands and enjoy.’ – Kate Noakes, The High Window
https://thehighwindowpress.com/category/reviews/
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ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT, 19 MARCH 2024
Jane Hirshfield, Maria Stepanova, and Maria's translator Sasha Dugdale celebrated the publication of their new poetry books at an online reading for Bloodaxe Books. They read live and discussed their work with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. The event also included readings of poems from the new Bloodaxe anthology Soul Feast, also published in March 2024 and which features four of Jane Hirshfield’s poems as well as Sasha Dugdale’s translation of a poem by Elena Shvarts.
This exceptionally interesting launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available to watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV8-QP8bdxg or by clicking on the arrow below.
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BBC RADIO 4 PUBLICITY FOR JANE HIRSHFIELD
The Poetry Detective: Poetry and Care, BBC Radio 4, Sunday 25 February 2024, 4.30pm
American poet Jane Hirshfield was interviewed for the new series of BBC Radio 4’s The Poetry Detective, a radio show about the poems that go with us through life, presented by poet Vanessa Kisuule.
Jane was speaking about her poem ‘The Weighing’, which is included in her 2005 retrospective Each Happiness Ringed by Lions as well as in her up-dated retrospective The Asking. She began by reading the poem.
In very moving interviews, three people spoke about how much the poem means to them. First of all was stroke-survivor Anna Zvegintzov who recovered her ability to write by copying out a poem every day - ‘The Weighing’ was the very first poem she copied out. Then two intensive care doctors from Canada spoke about how the poem helped them at especially difficult times in their work during the pandemic.
‘We speak to stroke-survivor Anna Zvegintzov who is using poetry as an act of self-care and tool of recovery. And we meet two doctors working in intensive care for whom a poem became 'like a hymn'. Jane Hirshfield, the author of that poem - The Weighing - speaks to Vanessa about writing and care.’
No longer available on BBC Sounds, but details are below. Jane Hirshfield’s poem is discussed from 13:38. Jane read her poem at 16:10, and spoke to Vanessa from 20:38.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001wr59
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Jane Hirshfield's ninth collection Ledger was published by Bloodaxe Books in March 2020. It is a book of personal, ecological and political reckoning. Her poems inscribe a ledger personal and communal, a registry of our time's and lives’ dilemmas as well as a call to action on climate change, social justice and the plight of refugees. Ledger was published in the UK and Europe by Bloodaxe, and by Knopf in the US.
ONLINE INTERVIEW WITH JANE HIRSHFIELD
Beshara Magazine, Issue 20: Winter 2021/22, online 17 February 2022
Jane Hirshfield was interviewed in depth for Beshara Magazine. She was talking about her latest work and the role of poetry in these difficult times. Three poems from her ninth collection Ledger were featured in full: ‘My Debt’, ‘Ghazal for The End of Time’ and ‘Amor Fati’.
Read here.
PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH JANE HIRSHFIELD
On Being podcast, 16 December 2021
Jane Hirshfield was interviewed in great depth for the US podcast On Being. She was in conversation with On Being founder Krista Tippett. Jane Hirshfield’s poetry is published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books and by Knopf in the US. Her ninth collection Ledger was published on 10 March 2020, just before everything came to a halt in response to the global pandemic. As Krista notes, many of the poems in the collection seem extraordinarily prescient.
Jane read and spoke about her poems ‘The Bowl’, ‘Some Questions’ and ‘Cataclysm’ from Ledger. Krista read the first poem ‘Let Them Not Say’ near the beginning of the podcast, and then Jane read it again at end of the interview. Jane also read 'My Species' from The Beauty (2015).
Jane Hirshfield: The Fullness of Things
'The esteemed writer Jane Hirshfield has been a Zen monk and a visiting artist among neuroscientists. She has said this: “It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this … It tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy; where there is joy, there will be sorrow … The acknowledgement of the fully complex scope of being is why good art thrills … Acknowledging the fullness of things,” she insists, “is our human task.” And that’s the ground Krista meanders with Jane Hirshfield in this conversation: the fullness of things — through the interplay of Zen and science, poetry and ecology — in her life and writing.'
Listen here. A full transcript is also available via this link.
[26 February 2024]
