“Rooms concise, or rooms distended: Jane Austen’s love of poetry”

The title is from a poem Jane Austen wrote to her brother Frank, congratulating him on the birth of a son and expressing her excitement in contemplating a move from Southampton to her new home at Chawton.

Our Chawton home, how much we find
Already in it, to our mind;
And how convinced, that when complete
It will all other Houses beat
That ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise, or rooms distended.

In this informal talk Maura Dooley will read from and discuss some of the poets Jane Austen loved, some of Jane Austen’s own poems and poetry written by Maura Dooley herself, in response to time spent at Austen’s home in Chawton.

Maura Dooley’s most recent collection of poetry is Five Fifty-Five (Bloodaxe). Anthologies she has edited include The Honey Gatherers: Love Poems and How Novelists Work. In 2016 she was Poet-in-Residence at Jane Austen’s House. Her own poems from the residency are published as A Quire of Paper . She also edited an anthology of poems by other contemporary poets responding to Austen’s work,  All My Important Nothings. In 2018 she published versions (with Elhum Shakerifa) of work by the exiled Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman, Negative of a Group Photograph (Bloodaxe) which received a PEN Translation Award. She has twice been short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Award and also for the Forward Single Poem Award. Her work has received an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Details:
Date: Saturday 13 September
Times: 3pm – 4pm
Location: This event is at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton. Find us
Tickets: £15

🏠 This event does not include House admission. Please purchase admission separately or use your Annual Pass if you wish to explore the House.

 This event is part of our Persuasion Festival, running from 12 – 21 September 2025