No 3 From Uses for the Thames was shortlisted for the Forward Prize

Hear Salvage

'Jane Draycott's imagination is large and extremely detailed. Her writing benefits from a blessed refusal to view ideas and feelings as separate realms. Given these strengths, her poems read as events and experiences rather than summaries. In TIDEWAY, with the Thames and its watermen, she may have found a perfect subject, where the elements of water and air meet and blend, where history is an active presence, and where the trove of objects lost and found invites the contemplation of mysteries which are, satisfyingly, not to be fathomed entirely. All this with her quizzical, exultant, exact music. A mesmeric and thrilling body of work, TIDEWAY deserves a wide readership.'

Sean O'Brien