In the Meantime

Elizabeth Jennings's first book won a Somerset Maugham Award, followed by the W.H. Smith Award (1987), Cholmondeley Award, and a C.B.E.

In this collection, Elizabeth Jennings strives to come to terms with losses, with failure, loves, and with time. The work also celebrates too, the ways of nature, and the poet's sorrow and anger for the suffering of others is informed by her own experience, her own loves.Elizabeth Jennings turned seventy the year this was published. This book of poems is graced by a firm wisdom and achieves moments of religious and individual serenity. "In the Meantime" strives to come to terms with losses, with failure, loves, and most of all with time. It celebrates, too, the ways of nature, and her sorrow and anger for the suffering of others is informed by her own experience, her own loves. Her previous book, "Familiar Spirits," was concerned with memory; here her eyes are on the present and the future, and memory touches her as potentiality. In the Meantime includes sonnets, lyrics, and experiments with free verse, the stanzas always shaped by a pressure of feeling.