Jane Ormerod
Spoken Word /Poetry
Biography
Born on the south coast of England, Jane Ormerod moved from London to New York City in 2004. She originally studied fine art and exhibited widely. Changing to writing, Jane gained a MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Jane is the author of the full-length poetry
collection, Recreational Vehicles on Fire (Three
Rooms Press, 2009), the chapbook 11 Films
(Modern
Metrics/Exot Books, 2008), and the spoken word CD Nashville
Invades Manhattan available from
CD Baby or
iTunes. Jane is also included in the new Hydrogen
Jukebox CD, Brain Ampin', available from
CD Baby or
Amazon. A new poetry collection will be published by Three Rooms
Press in 2012.
Jane's work also appears, or is forthcoming, in numerous US, UK and Canadian
print and online anthologies and journals including The
Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow,
21 Stars Review,
Ambush Review,
eratio postmodern
poetry,
failbetter,
Ginosko Literary Journal,
Inscribed: A Magazine for Writers, Night
Train,
O Sweet Flowery Roses, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Spiny
Babbler,
Unpleasant Event Schedule,
Whatever Literary Journal,
Word Riot.
A regular on the New York
poetry and spoken word circuit, readings have included The
Knitting Factory, The
Bowery Poetry Club, The Inspired Word, The Cornelia Street Cafe, Galapagos Art Space,
and The Stone where Jane has taken part in performances and readings
of Gertrude Stein's Pink Melon Joy, and the
work of Blaise Cendrars and Walt Whitman.
Jane performs extensively across the United States and further afield - San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Princeton, Syracuse, Amityville, Salt Lake City, Canada, Ireland, Britain, The Netherlands to name just a few places. 2011 events include the Knitting Factory Brooklyn, "On the Bias" presented by the WNBA at the Jefferson Market Library in NYC, The Inspired Word, Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles, Nashville, Woodstock, The Williams Carlos Williams Center in Rutherford NJ, and the fabulous, modernist, De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, England. 2012 events include The Inspired Word's Two Year Anniversary Show, and the Poetry Festival Santa Cruz.
The reading of "Raging Bull" was named as one of the "Best of 2009" performances at Cafe Impov's live television shows in Princeton, NJ. Other radio and television appearances include WKCR, Mike Marcellino's Notebook Writer, WBAI, and Rew Starr's *ReW & WhO?* Online and radio archive interviews include Writer's Sanctuary, Outsider Writers, Her Circle, Hardbop, and Other Poets.
Jane is a founding editor of Uphook Press, a small press specializing in poets and spoken word artists who love both the ink and the mic.
"Her poems--discontinuous, imagistic, chant-like, wide-ranging in its references, sonically dense--challenge more traditional ways of putting a poem together. She made us sound old-fashioned, more, she made us sound artificial, our tidy methodical artefacts simulacra of reality, instead of the postmodern reality caught and then broadcast like a radio signal from her poems."
Jee Leong Koh, Stories of a Reformed Headhunter
Review of Jane Ormerod's reading at The Cornelia Street Cafe, January 18th 2008