Jessie Lendennie is a poet and publisher. Born in Arkansas, she lived in California and New York City before leaving the States for London, England, in 1970. She obtained a BA honours degree in Philosophy at Kings College, London, and a post-graduate degree in education from the Roehampton Institute, London. She began to publish her poetry in England during the 1970s, and in 1981, she moved to Galway, County Galway, Ireland, where she was a founder member of the Galway Writing Workshop, and founding editor of the journal The Salmon. The journal led to book publishing, and in 1984 Salmon Publishing (now Salmon Poetry) was established. Since 1986 she has run the press as its editor and managing director, commissioning, editing, and publishing over 350 books of poetry and prose. Many of these books were first collections from Irish women poets—a groundbreaking move in Irish poetry. Her own poetry explores the relationship between landscape and human ideals. Her books include Daughter (1988), Daughter and Other Poems (2001), and Walking Here (2011). She has given numerous workshops, lectures, and writing courses in Ireland and abroad, including Yale University, University of Maryland, Marshall University, University of Alaska in Anchorage, University of Southern Illinois, Trinity College in Dublin, National University of Ireland, Rutgers University, University of Arkansas, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has read her poetry at dozens of venues in North America and Europe. In 1998 she was a writer-in-residence at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Jessie runs Salmon Poetry and the Salmon Bookshop from a house on a hill overlooking the Atlantic, half a mile from the fabulous Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare, Ireland. Read Terrain.org’s 2001 interview with Jessie.
