JENNINGS, ELIZABETH (JOAN)

born July 18, 1926, Boston, Lincolnshire, Eng. English poet whose works relate intensely personal matters in a plainspoken, traditional, and objective style and whose verse frequently reflects her devout Roman Catholicism and her love of Italy. The daughter of a physician, Jennings was educated at Oxford High School and St. Anne's College, Oxford. Her first pamphlet, Poems, appeared in 1953, followed by A Way of Looking (1955), which won her a Somerset Maugham Award and enabled her to visit Italy. Song for a Birth or a Death (1961) marked a new development, with its confessional tone and more savage view of love. Some of the best of her later poems concern her nervous breakdown and its aftermath. Collected Poems 1967 (1967) was followed by The Animals' Arrival (1969), Lucidities (1970), and Relationships (1972). A translation, The Sonnets of Michelangelo (1961), was revised in 1969. She published poetry for children and Selected Poems (1980).