Jan Owen

Jan Owen (born 18 August 1940) is a contemporary Australian poet.

Life Jan Owen was born Janette Muriel Sincock in Adelaide, South Australia, attending school there and in Melbourne, leaving early to work as a laboratory assistant. During the 60s she studied arts part-time at the University of Adelaide, then librarianship, and later travelled extensively in Europe and Asia.

Owen has worked as a writer, creative writing teacher and editor since 1985.

In July 2016 she was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal at the Mildura Writers' Festival.

Poetry Owen began writing poetry in her thirties, and her first collection, Boy with Telescope (1986), won the Anne Elder Award. She has had several writer's residencies in Australia and also in Italy, France, Malaysia, and Scotland.

Her awards include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Mary Gilmore Prize and the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. In 2007, she won the Max Harris Poetry Award for her poem "Scent, Comb, Spoon". The judges wrote: "a well crafted poem full of intriguing resonances on the theme of memory and association. The poem spins a chain of possibilities and disharmonies but always returns to the idea of the value of what we have experienced. This is a poem of turns and surprises and we enjoyed it more with each reading".