Jenny Powell
Jenny Powell's first collection of poems, Sweet Banana Wax Peppers (Headworx), was published in 1998, and her most recent work, Biology Field Trip [a different way of seeing] was published by Cold Hub Press in 2026. Powell was the 2020 RAK Mason Fellow. She has been a finalist in the UK Plough Poetry Prize, International Aesthetica Poetry Award, runner up in the UK Mslexia Poetry Competion, short listed in the Welsh Poetry Competition, the Lancaster UK One Minure Monologue Competition and the NZ Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award. She has been numinated for 'Best of the Net' and the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been pulbished in international and national anthologies, journals, pamphlets and posters for adults and children.
She has been involved in numberous collaborative projects, including two poetry collaborations. Double Jointed was written with Powell in duet with ten other poets, and Locating the Madonna was written with poet Anna Jackson. Powell's multi-media performance piece Alive in Berlin, was a finalist in the Dunedin Theatre Awards outstanding script/narrative/libretto.
She is the 'City of Literarure South D Poet Lorikeet' and in that role has undertaken numerous community projects for adults and children.
Genre:
Skills:
- Autobiography / Memoir
- Poetry
Branch:
Otago/Southland
Location:
Dunedin
Publications:
The Case of the Missing Body
This is the true and unusual story of Lily, who has no sense of her body. Desperate to try anything to ‘be normal’, a skeptical Lily agrees to begin work with her physiotherapist in a gymnasium. One extraordinary day, working in the gym, Lily discovers she has shoulder blades. All her life she has thought people only felt their heads, with thoughts trailing along in and behind them. Now she has shoulder blades. There is nothing easy about what is to follow. Neither Patrick (the physiotherapist) nor Lily could have predicted it. But with help from professionals, the writer of this moving memoir becomes her own detective, searching for clues to help her find her own body.
South D Poet Lorikeet
Published by Cold Hub Press, 2017, this collection establishes South Dunedin as the poet's place. These are poems that travel in unexpected directions, with themes that twist and replicate like the patterns of DNA.
Meeting Rita
Meeting Rita is a collection of poems inspired by New Zealand artist Rita Angus (1908-70). Rita has shifted in time to become the poet's friend. In a series of imagined encounters poet and painter share expereinces and talk about things of importamce: clothes, love, place, painting, poetry, the meaning of life.Speciific paintings and and actual episodes in Rita's life are referred to. At times art and music are translated into an over-arching layer of language, with reponding patterns, rhythms and tones.