Jenny Lewis is a poet, songwriter, playwright, screenwriter, children's author, advertising copywriter and creative writing teacher. She has written award-winning books and plays and co-authored a TV series for children, James the Cat. Her epic poem When I Became an Amazon, was published by Iron Press in 1996, and has been translated into Russian, widely performed and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. 20 of her poems were published in Oxford Poets 2000 by Carcanet Press, which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poems have been published in a variety of magazines and journals and in 1997 she won the New Writer Prize with Woman Brushing Her Hair. Other prizewinning poems include Lupins which was placed second in the Aberystwith Prize and Slag which was a runner up in the Exeter Prize. Her second collection, Fathom, was published in 2007 by Oxford Poets/ Carcanet Press. She teaches poetry at Oxford University.
Jenny started out as a painter, training at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. While at Oxford, she was lucky enough to count among her close friends Michael Palin (Brasenose College) and Terry Jones (St Edmund Hall) of Monty Python fame and singer/ songwriter Vashti Bunyan. In September 1963, Vashti and Jenny met on the steps of the Ashmolean Museum on the first day of term and immediately became firm friends. They shared digs in Iffley Road with their hamster, Heap and Vashti quickly learned to play Jenny's old guitar, Benji. Together, they wrote the song 17 Pink Sugar Elephants which Vashti later developed into the hauntingly melodic Train Song. They formed a group - The Three of Us - with fellow Ruskin School of Art student, Angela Strange (an old family friend of Vashti's) and sang and played a mixture of their own songs and cover versions which included Peggy Sue and That'll Be the Day by Buddy Holly, Dream by the Everley Brothers, Travelling Light by Cliff Richard and Freight Train by Lonnie Donegan. These were all songs that Jenny had played with her skiffle group at the Royal Masonic School where she had been a boarder for 10 years. They also sang with the Oxford band The Four Beats which later became The Dark Blues (still going strong today!)
Vashti left Oxford to start her music career and her now legendary journey in a gypsy caravan to the Isle of Uist in the Outer Hebrides - along the way composing and recording her album, Just Another Diamond Day. Jenny and Angy recorded two singles written by Jenny - Bring it To Me and I've Heard it All Before on the EMI/ Verve Folkways label. They recorded six or seven songs for an album which was never released and is now lost (if anyone can find it, please bring it home!) before going their separate ways - Jenny to Ealing School of Art in London (stamping ground of, among other musical greats, Pete Townshend and Freddie Mercury). Students from Ealing worked on the groundbreaking animated film Yellow Submarine, and a friend of Jenny's (Nigel May) gave her some cells from the film of the Apple Bonker and the Nowhere Man (thanks Nige!) which now hang on the wall of her son's Glasgow flat. After Ealing, Jenny got a job in an advertising agency, S.H.Benson in Holborn, where she marginally redesigned the Marmite label and wrote a now 'classic' 60's cinema commercial for Happy Shoes, starring Lulu, with a jaunty jingle by Maurice Gibb (watch the video here). She also went to Morocco for six weeks writing a campaign for the Moroccan Tourist Board, travelling with a photographer and model through Tangier, Fez, Meknes, the Atlas Mountains, Marrakesh, into the desert (Ouzarzate), then back up via Casablanca and Rabat. A year later, she went to Canada for two months, again travelling extensively (Vancouver Island was a high point) for the Canadian Tourist Board. When Tom was born in 1973, Jenny quit advertising and moved with her husband to Yorkshire where she lived for 13 years. Ed (now a drummer with the band The Epstein) was born in 1978.
While in Yorkshire, Jenny wrote - as Jenny Hawkesworth - two children's books. The Lonely Skyscraper, illustrated by Emmanuel Schongut, was published in 1981 by Walker Books. A Handbook of Family Monsters, illustrated by Colin McNaughton, was published by Dent in 1982. In 1987, Jenny collaborated with Colin and Mark Bramble, the producer of Barnum and 42 Street, on a musical version of Colin's book Fat Pig which was first performed in Houston, Texas and later (under the title Fat Pig - the Musical) at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. The following year, Jenny's play Me and My Dinosaur (for which she also wrote the music) was performed at the Polka Children's Theatre in London.
After her divorce, Jenny came back to Oxford where she initially worked as a copywriter; but after the publication of her epic poem, When I Became an Amazon, she threw her energies into poetry, working first with Yasmin Sidhwa from the Pegasus Theatre, Oxford, and singer/ composer Juliet Russell to dramatise Amazon and tour it to London, Cambridge and San Francisco. She then worked as Writer in Residence for the Oxfordshire Community Arts Theatre Group, Coral Arts, on a site-specific promenade performance with music, dance and video installations - The Gifts of the Angels - performed at Dorchester Abbey in 1997. She did a second stint for Coral Arts in 1999 - 2000, working with a mixed group of adults and children and with Butoh Dance Group Café Raison and classical ghazal singer Jayanta Bose (whose amazing voice can be heard on Nitin Sawhney albums) on The Forest that Sailed Away - about the deforestation of Oxfordshire to build ships to fight the Armada.
In 2001, Jenny received a major grant from the Arts Council South East to study troubadour lyrics in the Languedoc. With early music group Third Voice she developed and performed The Art of Loving Honourably for the Oxford Literary Festival and other festivals. Extracts were included in a performance at the Royal Festival Hall. In 2002, Jenny worked with the Oxford Youth Theatre on a poetry and rock musical, Map of Stars. She ran lyric writing workshops with the young actors (aged between 14-21) and worked with local band, Red2, to develop the score which they recorded on a CD. During this time Jenny also held Writing Residencies with BBC Wiltshire Sound and Channel 6TV (the Oxford Channel) as well as running a weekly poetry slot on BBC Thames Valley radio for two years.
Jenny has also worked as a press officer for Defra, English Heritage and, for a short time, at No 10 Downing Street where she prepared Parliamentary briefings for Tony Blair and worked alongside TB's speechwriter. She also met Alistair Campbell (who seemed like a really nice, incredibly family-oriented guy). She worked for a year for the Equality and Human Rights Commission which strengthened even more her commitment to supporting those who are dedicated to creating a society based on fairness and respect for all its members. She has now given up other writing commitments to concentrate on her next collection which will explore her father's experience as a young Lieutenant in the South Wales Borderers, fighting in the little known (and disastrous) World War 1 Mesopotamian (Iraq) campaign. Her research will compare and contrast the experience of troops returning from the present Iraq war.
Published and performed works include:
Publications
- Fathom
- Oxford Poets/ Carcanet Press (poetry collection) 2007
- I Am Twenty People!
- Enitharmon, (4 poems) 2007
- Synergies: Creative Writing in Academic Practice Vols I and II
- edited with Professor Lucy Newlyn (Chough Press) 2003/ 2004
- To Make the Passion Keep its Distance: Bernard O'Donoghue's poetry of restraint
- 5,000 word article in Cork Literary Review, Vol X, 2003, ed. Sheila O'Hagan
- When I Became an Amazon
- (English/ Russian edition) Bilingua, 2002
- Oxford Poets 2000
- Carcanet Press (20 poems) 2001
- When I Became an Amazon
- Iron Press (poetry sequence) 1996
Poetry cycles and cross arts performance
- Fragments of the World Cast Adrift
- poetry cycle based on 13th century Spanish troubadour lyrics, commissioned for the Brighton Early Music Festival 2005
- Garden of the Senses
- poetry cycle performed with music and dance, jointly commissioned by the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2005 and the Pegasus Theatre
- The Art of Loving Honourably
- poetry cycle inspired by 12th and 13th century troubadour music and lyrics from the Languedoc, performed with Third Voice (early music group) at festivals and at the Royal Festival Hall 2003
- Map of Stars
- poetry and rock musical for the Oxford Youth Theatre, March 2002
- The Forest That Sailed Away
- community arts theatre project performed at Minster Lovell Hall, November 2000, looking at the deforestation of Oxfordshire
- The Gifts of the Angels
- cross-arts performance combining poetry, music, dance and film and video installations at Dorchester Abbey, October 1998, looking at the coming of Christianity to Oxfordshire in 786 AD.
Writing for children
- Thomas the Tank Engine
- writing Thomas stories for the Britt Allcroft Foundation including two annuals, with Christopher Awdry, for Grandreams. Writing and editing the Thomas the Tank Engine newsletter.
- James the Cat
- co-writing 26- part TV animation series with Kate Canning of the Canning Factory, 2001, shown on Channel 5 and the Cartoon Channel.
- Me and My Dinosaur
- Polka Theatre, London, 1988
- Fat Pig - the Musical
- Houston Children's Drama Festival and Leicester Haymarket Theatre, 1987
- A Handbook of Family Monsters
- as Jenny Hawkesworth
- Dent, 1982
- The Lonely Skyscraper
- as Jenny Hawkesworth
- Walker Books, 1981, shown three times on Playschool, voted most promising newcomer of the year by the National Book League.