Donahaye, Jasmine

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Donahaye, Jasmine

PERSONAL:

Born in England; immigrated to United States; immigrated to Wales. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A.; University of Wales, Swansea, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Wales.

CAREER:

Poet, writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Poetry awards include the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize, 1999, and Joan Lee Yang Memorial Prize, 2000.

WRITINGS:

Misappropriations (poems), Parthian (Cardigan, Wales), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Planet, and Calyx, and to collections.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jasmine Donahaye was born in England of Jewish parents and spent twelve years in the United States before resettling in Wales. She is a poet and a writer on such subjects as Jewish literature and culture, and Celtic legend. Donahaye writes in English.

Donahaye's poetry collection Misappropriations reflects themes of childhood, motherhood, sexuality, and displacement within the landscapes of both rural and urban Wales, England, Israel, and California. Many of the poems reflect Donahaye's love of horses, and the sense of touch is frequently called upon to emphasize the sensuality in her themes. Motherhood, which Donahaye does not entirely embrace, is explored in the pregnancy of mares. She also uses the image of a mare's skull, perhaps representing the empty womb, and the poem "Termination," with its threads of Celtic ritual and myth, is about an abortion.

Reviewing the collection for the Tower Poetry Web site, Patrick Macfarlane wrote that it "reads like an autopsy report for modern intimacy. Donahaye's narrators are forced to consider their status as human beings: physically united by circumstance, they maintain tenuous relationships in the world of words: man and woman, mother and child, Palestinian and Israeli, pressed up against each other in reluctant society."