Jan Owen - Poetry

Poetry

Owen began writing poetry in her thirties and her first collection, Boy with Telescope (1986), won the Anne Elder Award. She has had several writer's residencies in Australia and also in Italy, France, Malaysia, and Scotland.

Her awards include the Mary Gilmore Prize and the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. In 2007, she won the Max Harris Poetry Award for her poem "Scent, Comb, Spoon". The judges wrote: "a well crafted poem full of intriguing resonances on the theme of memory and association. The poem spins a chain of possibilities and disharmonies but always returns to the idea of the value of what we have experienced. This is a poem of turns and surprises and we enjoyed it more with each reading".

In a radio interview in 2002, Owen said that "I sometimes think that I should be writing political satire or trying to tackle the real problems of this world, and then I remember a Taoist saying which is 'You think you can improve the world? I do not think it can be done'." In the same interview, she also said that "poetry is against dogma, against a final certainty, it's very unsettling. ... I think we need the challenge and the shake-up, and the freshness of a new way of looking at things which poetry can give us."