Epigraph: And trust not that the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your life; for as soon, if God call, the young goeth as the
old; labour always to learn to die.
- Lady Jane Grey, in a letter to her sister, written the night before her
execution
Blake Prize 2013 Judges’ Comments
This poem takes a feminist and historically revisionary interpretation on the medieval notion of preparation for death. The versification is confident with a strong muscular language and an unflinching tone. In its formality this renders a political context to the persona of Lady Jane Grey soliloquised in her intimate final crisis. The imagery is suggestive, exercised with a delicacy that befits the speaker’s voice.