Jane McKinley
Musician & Poet
BOOKS
Mudman
Finalist for the Able Muse Award
I’m always delighted to learn a new word from poetry, and in marcescent—as when leaves wither yet cling to the bough—Jane McKinley has found a figure for elegy: “No time to prepare / for the loss so the dead keep rattling on.” McKinley’s heartbreaking poems are haunted by the ghosts of family and friends who have gone on before her, often much too soon. At the center of Mudman are poems—some “found” in letters—about McKinley’s father, a World War II veteran whose death continues to possess the poet’s psyche. Her many deft descriptions of nature dovetail with such losses, presenting a world in which elegy and legacy combine. A bracing, affecting collection.
—David Yezzi, author of More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems
Publication Date: October 23, 2026
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Vanitas
Winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Award
In this very human book, McKinley writes of the tragic childhood loss of a sister, the irrevocable turning point—evoking the search for threads of prophecy, patterns of meaning. The longing is tangible in Vanitas, delivered by messengers: Bach, Mozart, sparrows and crows; a pool of angled water that reflected golden boughs. . . . In a sure voice with lovely sound, McKinley's narratives are formal and evocative in their movement, asking: What does it mean to be whole?
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Jan Beatty, author of Dragstripping
Texas Tech University Press, 2011
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READ POEMS ONLINE
(Winner of the 92nd Street Y's 2011 Rachel Wetzsteon Poetry Prize)
Small Talk; Perfect Paul; Marcescent,
Beech Sapling in a Wood; Becoming
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LISTEN TO POEMS ONLINE
Late October in a Bird Sanctuary
(published in The Southern Review, Winter 2024)
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BIOGRAPHY
Jane McKinley is a Baroque oboist who served as the artistic director of the Dryden Ensemble for nearly thirty years. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Northwestern University and an MFA in historical musicology from Princeton University. In 2003 she began writing poetry after a lapse of thirty years and in 2008 was awarded the Patricia Dobler Prize for her sonnet, "Mud Season." Her poetry collection Vanitas received the 2011 Walt McDonald First-Book Prize and was published by Texas Tech University Press.
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Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Five Points, Baltimore Review, Great River Review, Tar River Poetry, 2River View, ONE ART, on Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She was awarded a Poetry Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 2023. Her second collection, Mudman, was a finalist for the 2023 Able Muse Book Award. In 2025 she was a Fellow at the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts. She grew up in a small town in Iowa and currently lives in Hopewell, New Jersey with her husband.
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"Why and how does a professional oboist become a publishing poet in middle age?" Read "At Bubble Pond: The Back Story," published online by The Georgia Review in Fall 2010.
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AWARDS & HONORS
2008: The sonnet "Mud Season" was selected by Ann Townsend for the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, which included a residency in Ireland.
2011: The Walt McDonald First-Book Prize was awarded to Vanitas, which was then published by Texas Tech University Press.
2011: The sonnet "Imperfections" was selected by Daniel Hall to receive the Rachel Wetzsteon Poetry Prize from the 92nd Street Y.
Daniel Hall on "Imperfections": "An ars poetica as well as a hymn to negative capability, "Imperfections" unfolds "as if by naming something non-existent." It dreams itself into being, if only to arrive at its own conclusion, which seems as inevitable—and as right—as a punchline."
2023: Poetry Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts
2023: Mudman was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award, judged by David Yezzi.
2025: Named a Fellow at the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts.
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