Jen Hadfield

Jen Hadfield (born 1978) is a British poet and visual artist.^[1] She has published four poetry collections. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003.^[2] Hadfield is the youngest female poet to be awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize, with her second collection, Nigh-No-Place, in 2008.^[1] Her fourth collection, The Stone Age, was selected as the Poetry Book Society choice for spring 2021 and won the Highland Book Prize, 2021. In 2024, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell prize.^[3]

Jen Hadfield FRSL
Hadfield in 2007
Born	1978 (age 46–47) Cheshire, England
Occupation	Poet, visual artist, teacher
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh University of Glasgow
Notable works	Nigh-No-Place, Almanacs
Notable awards	T. S. Eliot Prize Eric Gregory Award Windham-Campbell

Hadfield's poems and visual art are based on her experience of living, working and traveling in Shetland and the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, and Canada.^[2] In her work as an artist, she often uses found objects, salvage materials and ocean detritus.^[1]

Themes in Hadfield's poems include home and belonging, wildness and subsistence, landscape and language, and the Shetland dialect.^[2]

Biography

Jen Hadfield was born in 1978 to a Canadian mother and a British father.^[4] She grew up in Cheshire, England.^[2] She obtained a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Later, she was awarded a joint creative writing MLitt (with Distinction) from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde.^[2]

Hadfield has been a professional poet since 2002.^[5] In 2003, she won the Eric Gregory Award, which enabled a year of travel and writing in Canada.^[2] Her first collection, Almanacs (Bloodaxe Books, 2005) was written in Shetland and the Western Isles in 2002, thanks to a bursary from the Scottish Arts Council. Her second collection, Nigh–No–Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), inspired by her travels in Shetland and Canada, was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2008.^[6] Hadfield was winner of the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Award in 2012.^[7] and selected in 2014 as one of "Next Generation Poets", a promotion organised by the Poetry Book Society. Other honours include the Scottish Arts Council Bursary Award, and residencies with the Shetland Arts Trust and the Scottish Poetry Library.^[1][2][8]

Making artists' books is part of Hadfield's work. She collaborated with printer Ursula Freeman of Redlake Press on The Printer’s Devil and the Little Bear (2006), a limited edition handmade book that combined traditional letterpress techniques and laserprint. The book is illustrated with Hadfield's photographs of Canada.^[2]

In 2007, a Dewar Award enabled Hadfield to travel in Mexico and research Mexican devotional folk art. She "created a solo exhibition of 'Shetland ex-votos in the style of sacred Mexican folk art' – tiny, portable, insistently familiar landscapes packed in an array of weathered tobacco tins."^[2]

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021.^[9]

Hadfield lives on Burra in Shetland, where she works as a poet and writing tutor.^[8][3] She has a partner and a child.^[10]

Hadfield has said "We live in painful times, in a difficult world, and yet the world is still overwhelmingly magical. Poetry gives us a chance to stop, reflect, process, cope, grieve and revere".^[11]

Bibliography

Poetry collections

• Almanacs (Bloodaxe Books, 2005)

• Nigh–No–Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2008)
• Byssus (Picador, 2014)
• The Stone Age (Picador, 2021)

Biographies

• Storm Pegs: A Life Made in Shetland (Picador, 2024)