Jenny Lewis

Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, translator and songwriter who teaches poetry at Oxford University. She has had eight plays and poetry cycles performed at major theatres including the Leicester Haymarket, The Polka Theatre (for children), the Royal Festival Hall and Pegasus Theatre, Oxford where she was a Core Writing Tutor for 20 years. She has also published four full collections of poetry – When I Became an Amazon (Iron Press, 1996), Fathom and Taking Mesopotamia (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet, 2007/2014), Gilgamesh Retold (Carcanet Press, 2018). Two chapbooks in English and Arabic with Adnan Al-Sayegh, Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq and Singing for Inanna (Mulfran Press, 2013/ 14) were published as part of the award-winning, Arts Council-funded ‘Writing Mesopotamia’ project which aims to build bridges and foster friendships between English and Arabic-speaking communities. Gilgamesh Retold was a New Statesman Book of the Year, a Carcanet Book of the Year and a London Review of Books Bookshop ‘Book of the Week’ on publication. She is currently completing a PhD on Gilgamesh at Goldsmiths, London University.

Her English/Arabic translation of Adnan Al-Sayegh's epic poem Uruk's Anthem, Let Me Tell You What I Saw, as published in October 2020.