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Jane Elsdon  

Poetry Power
by Eva Poole-Gilson

Poet Jane Elsdon's two new books: Morning and Other Glories, published in the fall of 2004, contains poems of portrait and poems of place. In the Rain Shadow is a collection of Eastern High Sierra poems written over the past forty-nine years. Her husband’s parents, Opal and Newt Elsdon, moved here fifty years ago. Jane and her husband Gene have paid them many visits, long and short, and Jane’s been loving the mountains and high desert ever since.

Though Jane was voted Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo in 2005, she’s been writing poetry all her life—“seriously,” she says, “for the last twenty-seven years.” She’s also written a children’s novel, The Secret of the Dunes, and has published many short stories in literary magazines, winning numerous awards. One year, Cross Currents not only chose her story as the winner in their annual fiction contest, but the editors also nominated her for the prestigious, national Pushcart Prize. Her poems have often appeared in Pudding House Publications of Ohio; they  published her highly praised collection of poems called Shadow Work.

Jane has long and generously shared her skill as a writer in other ways. She taught for California Poets in the Schools for over fifteen years, bringing poetry to elementary and high school students in a number of California counties. A few years ago Jane spent a week teaching children in our Death Valley, Shoshone, and Tecopa schools. Jane also teaches adults right now—mainly seniors—at Ye Olde Bookshoppe in Atascadero. She’s been facilitating that group of writers for five years. Also, for the past three and a half years, she’s spearheaded the Third Thursday Poetry Series at Carlene’s Café in Atascadero. Jane finds and secures a featured reader, manages publicity, and arranges that the guest poet be followed by an open-mike.

Now Jane is a featured poet in the Owens Valley….

I met Jane at a California Poets in the Schools’ conference twenty years ago, and she’s been a good friend ever since. I am delighted that I get to see her often because her husband’s parents live in Bishop…. 

I’ve been reading Jane’s writing ever since I met her: Jane is a Real Writer. She’s widely, widely published. But more than that: she’s thoughtful and circumspect, entertaining and compassionate. And, certainly, she’s versatile: she writes for children and for adults. She’s just received word that a prose piece of hers will be in Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen’s new Chicken Soup for Grandma’s Soul, scheduled for publication this August.

Jane is gifted with an exquisite command of the language and uses it with a deftness that promises unforgettable surprises to reader or listener.

She is, in a word, amazing.

She says, “I love to come up there, to the High Sierra.”

I say to all you readers, Let’s be sure the High Sierra loves her back. She’s a keeper.