From Base Materials

About Jenny Lewis

Jenny Lewis is a poet playwright translator and songwriter who teaches poetry at Oxford University. She has had seven plays and poetry cycles performed at major UK theatres and published four collections; the most recent Gilgamesh Retold (Carcanet 2018) was a New Statesman Book of the Year an LRB Bookshop Book of the Week and Carcanet's first audio book. Jenny has also published three chapbooks from Mulfran Press in English and Arabic with the exiled Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh which are part of the award-winning Arts Council-funded 'Writing Mesopotamia' project aimed at building bridges between English and Arabic-speaking communities. Jenny's first book When I Became an Amazon (Iron Press 1996/ Bilingua Russia 2002) was set to music by Gennadyi Shiroglazov and performed by the Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Company in 2017 and for International Women's Day 2023 by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Jenny's album of her 1960's songs (including 'Seventeen Pink Sugar Elephants' co-written with Vashti Bunyan in 1963 and newly arranged and played by Vashti with Gareth Dickson) is forthcoming in 2024.