Jean Bleakney (née Kerr) was born in Newry in 1956. She studied biochemistry at Queen’s University Belfast and spent eight years in medical research. She also worked for over twenty years as a garden centre assistant. She lives in Belfast. Twelve of her poems are paired with Eavan Boland’s as a study option on the CCEA syllabus for GCE English Literature at AS (The Study of Poetry 1900–Present).
Her first three collections of poetry The Ripple Tank Experiment (1999), The Poet’s Ivy (2003) and ions (2011) were published by Lagan Press. Her Selected Poems was published by Templar Poetry in 2016. Her fourth collection No Remedy , also from Templar Poetry, in 2017.
Poems have appeared in various magazines including Poetry Ireland Review, The Rialto, THE SHOp, Metre, TLS, The Yellow Nib and Pleiades.
Also in anthologies including…
- Metamorphic: 21st century poets respond to Ovid ed. Paul Munden & Nessa O’Mahony (Recent Works Press, 2017)
- Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland ed. Linda Anderson & Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado (New Island Books, 2017)
- Rear-View Mirror ed. Paul Muldoon (Poetry Ireland, 2017)
- The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland, ed. Chris Agee published by Wake Forest University Press (2008)
- Magnetic North: The Emerging Poets, ed. John Brown (The Verbal Arts Centre in association with Lagan Press, 2006)
- The New Irish Poets, ed. Selina Guinness (Bloodaxe, 2004)
- The Blackbird’s Nest, ed. Frank Ormsby (Blackstaff Press, 2003)
- New Soundings: An anthology of new writing from the North of Ireland, ed. Daragh Carville (Blackstaff Press, 2003)
- A Conversation Piece: Poetry and Art, eds. Adrian Rice & Angela Reid (The Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland in association with Abbey Press, 2002)
- The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol V (2002)
- The Hauling Songs: An Anthology of new writing from Queen’s University Belfast, ed, Daragh Carville (2000)
- The White Page / An Bhileog Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets, ed. Joan McBreen (Salmon Poetry, 2000)
Interviews
- by Darran Anderson The Tangerine issue two (2017)
- by Dr Alex Pryce iOTA Poetry issue 96 (2017)
- by John Brown In The Chair: Interviews with Poets from Northern Ireland, ed. John Brown (Salmon Publishing, 2002)
One of her poems, ‘Be Careful of the Lilies’, was discussed by John Redmond in his How To Write a Poem (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
Jean Bleakney 