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Nannestad, Elizabeth
Writer's File

Elizabeth Nannestad

Auckland - Tāmaki Makaurau
Nannestad, Elizabeth
In brief
Elizabeth Nannestad is a poet. She has also worked as a doctor and forensic psychiatrist. Her first collection of poetry, Jump, was published in 1986. The collection was the joint winner of the 1987 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry with Allen Curnow. Her second collection, If He’s a Good Dog He’ll Swim, was published in 1996. A wide selection of her poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies.
Bio

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nannestad, Elizabeth (1956 – ) is a poet.

Elizabeth Nannestad was born in Browns Bay, Auckland. She studied medicine at Otago University and has worked as a doctor and forensic psychiatrist. She lives and works in Auckland.

Nannestad’s first collection of poetry Jump (Auckland University Press, 1986) was a joint winner of the 1987 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry with Allen Curnow. Her second collection If He’s a Good Dog He’ll Swim (Auckland University Press) was published in 1996.

Her work has been published in literary journals Sport, Poetry New Zealand, Landfall and Islands. Her poems have also been anthologised in My Heart Goes Swimming: New Zealand Love Poems (1996) and An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English (1997).

On the back jacket of her first book Jump, she writes: ‘These poems span ten years. They are all about movement around some pivot that appears for the moment to stay the same; they are made that way so that, as far as poems can, they have lives of their own. They can take off now for wherever they like to go. That’s what I will do, too.’

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