Jean Earle, the pseudonym of Doris Burge Biography

British poet, born in Bristol; she grew up in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales, which provides material for a number of her poems. Since 1937 she has lived in various parts of Wales. A Trial of Strength (1980), her first collection of poems, appeared when she was 71, following her resumption of writing many years after the publication of some of her stories and poems in various magazines. The volume suggests access to deep resources of memory and imagination in the disquietingly understated intensities of mood and deftly assured free-verse cadences of many poems. Her subsequent collections include The Intent Look (1984), Visiting Light (1987), and Selected Poems (1990). Much of her work explores the possibilities of affirmative significance in human and natural contexts she habitually views with sceptical intelligence. She has also written radio documentaries and worked as a literary journalist.