With a consistent body of writing behind her, Jenny Joseph has established herself as one of the British poets who came to maturity in the 1950s and have been published for thirty years. From the immediacy of "February Floods 1953" to the mental landscape of "Two Elements" (1978), her work has subtly shifted its emphasis; it has become more colloquial and less "literary" but it has gained philosophical depth. Yet her poetic preoccupations have not changed, even as her stance has become tougher and grittier in its stoicism.

Jenny Joseph was born in Birmingham, the second daughter of Louis and Florence Joseph, and spent her childhood in Buckinghamshire. Her parents were Jewish, but she never felt particularly Jewish, and her family practiced no traditional Jewish customs or rituals. When her school was evacuated from Bristol to North Devon during World War II, the Devon landscape made a deep impression on...