Jane Davis left school at 16 with two 'O' levels. After having her first child aged 18, she worked in cafes and bars and returned to education in her twenties, gaining a first class honours degree in English from the University of Liverpool in 1983 and a PhD in 1986. Since then she has taught Literature in adult education and now runs The Reader, a literary magazine, and its community and schools reading projects. Jane's poems have appeared in The Liver Bards, PN Review and Quadrant.

On the World's Carpet
This new collection of poems by Jane Davis introduces a post-feminist voice, at once urgent and practical. She is excited by the security of the domestic and the freedom to inhabit the world. On the World's Carpet is a set of poems about the ordinary life of an ordinary person. Jane has always been interested in the extra-ordinary nature of common experiences.

Photo of Jane Davis by Ben Davis

Poems
Waiting, Vertical
The Glimpse
Hardy Geraniums

Links
Jane Davis runs The Reader Centre and edits The Reader Magazine. You can visit The Reader website here.

Four new poems by Jane Davis appeared in PN Review number 158. You can visit the PN Review website here.

Praise for On the World's Carpet:
'Over and above its many painterly virtues, the poetry of Jane Davis shows a lovely mastery of the dimension of breath. She hasn't hurried her gift but this is the right moment for a book of her work to appear.'
- Les Murray

'Davis's eyes are brilliantly alive. In 'Pregnant November', laid-out baby clothes radiate eons of dreams as they 'shine thin light from the future' against a starless night. In 'On St Lucy's Day', an older mother holds up a grey acrylic jumper, whose turquoise flecks leap electric from the poem, highlighting everyone's need for comfort and beauty and hope. Above all, moment upon moment, in a voice that is only hers, she unfurls the touching, terrifying, strange and forever thing that is family.'
- Andrea Ashworth