About Elizabeth Jennings (poet)
Elizabeth Joan Jennings (18 July 1926 – 26 October 2001) was a British poet. She won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1955 for her second poetry collection, A Way of Looking. == Life and career == Elizabeth Jennings was born at The Bungalow, Tower Road, Skirbeck, Boston, Lincolnshire, younger daughter of physician Henry Cecil Jennings (1893–1967), MA, BSc (Oxon.), MB BS (Lond.), DPH, medical officer of health for Oxfordshire, and (Helen) Mary, née Turner. When Elizabeth was seven years old, her family moved to Oxford, where she remained for the rest of her life. There, she later attended St Anne's College. After graduation, she became a writer. Jennings's early poetry was published in journals such as Oxford Poetry, New English Weekly, The Spectator, Outposts and Poetry Review, but her first book of poems was not published until she was 27. The lyrical poets she cited as having influenced her were Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden, Robert Graves and Edwin Muir. Her second book, A Way of Looking (1955), won the Somerset Maugham Award and marked a turning point, as the prize money allowed her to spend nearly three months in Rome, which was a revelation. It brought a new dimension to her religious belief and inspired her imagination.
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