Jenny Powell

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Powell, Jenny (1960- ) is a poet, performance poet and creative writing tutor.

Jenny Powell was born in Dunedin. After studying music in Wellington, Powell returned to Dunedin where she continues to live.

In 1996 she graduated from John Dolan's Poetry Class at Otago University. Jenny Powell (who also published as Jenny Powell-Chalmers) has been widely published in international literary journals and anthologies.

She has twice been a finalist in the UK based Aesthetica Creative Works Competition, and in the Wales Poetry Competition. She has been short-listed for the UK Plough Poetry Prize, runner up in the UK Myslexia Poetry Competition, finalist in the Lancaster UK One Minute Monologues competition and she has been shortlisted for the Janet Frame Memorial Award, the inaugural NZ Book Month ‘Six Pack’ Competition, and has won the Dunedin Chinese Garden Harvest Moon Poetry Competition. In 2020 Powell’s work was nominated by Takahe Magazine for the ‘Best of the Net’ anthology, and in 2020 Powell was the RAK Mason Writing Fellow.

Powell's collections from HeadworX publishers are Sweet Banana Wax Peppers (1998), Hats (2000), Four French Horns (2004), and Viet Nam: a poem journey (2010). Writing in New Zealand Books, Michael Harlow described Powell-Chalmers' first collection, Sweet Banana Wax Peppers, as, 'strikingly provocative and insightful’.

Ticket Home: Thirty Poems by Jenny Powell was released by Cold Hub Press in 2012, followed by Trouble (2014) and South D Poet Lorikeet (2017). Reviewing Trouble in Landfall NZ, Lynley Edmeades wrote 'Jenny Powell knows how to write a great poem; she knows lyricism and she writes with a cinematic theme and presence.'

Her cross-genre account of a woman who has no sense of her body, was published by Otago University Press in 2016. The Case of the Missing Body begins to be solved, when, on one extraordinary day, working in the gym with her physiotherapist, ‘Lily’ discovers she has shoulder blades.

Meeting Rita, Cold Hub Press (2021), is a collection of poems inspired by New Zealand artist Rita Angus (1908-70). A review in the 2023 Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, described the poems as ‘a masterclass, the collection of a poet in perfect control and communion with her craft and subject.’

Jenny Powell and Kay McKenzie Cooke have formed the touring partnership of J & K. They regularly tour the Otago/Southland hinterland, frequently targeting areas that have not had visiting poets. As well as giving readings, a primary aim of the project is to encourage local poets to read their own work. A number of rural writing groups have arisen from these visits. In 2020 Powell, McKenzie Cooke (and Michael O’Leary) were support poets for David Eggleton’s New Zealand Poet Laureate Inauguration at Matahiwi Marae.

In collaboration with composer Kerian Varaine and animateur Simon O’Connor, Montecillo Child, Powell’s performance piece for voices, images and soundscape had its debut season at Toitu Otago Settler’s Gallery in 2015. It was produced by Talking House as one of the Gallipoli centennial commemorations.

With composer Kerian Varaine, film-maker Phoebe MacKenzie and animateur Simon O'Connor, Powell wrote and performed Alive in Berlin at the 2017 Dunedin Fringe Festival. A mix of spoken word - poetry, prose and one-person 'dialogues' - with projected images and new music compositions, the work explores ideas of displacement and uncertainty from shifting perspectives of time, place, events, memory and the psyche itself. Alive in Berlin was a finalist in the 2017 Dunedin Theatre Awards for Outstanding Written Text/Narrative/Libretto.

Jenny Powell and composer Anthony Ritchie were commissioned to write a vocal and instrumental piece to mark the 50^th Anniversary of Saturday Morning Music Classes in Dunedin. Toitu’s Song was performed in the Dunedin Town Hall in 2018.

Powell’s poems for children can be found in NZ School Journals, the NZ Poetry Shelf site, and in A Treasury of New Zealand Poems for Children (2014), and Roar Squeak Purr A NZ Treasury of Animal Poems (2022).

As the Dunedin City of Literature South D Poet Lorikeet, In 2021 and 2022 Powell visited various new entrant classes in South Dunedin, combining literacy and poetry. The results of the visits have been published by Dunedin City of Literature in a small collection of Teddy Poems. Each child in the classes received their own copy.

WRITERS IN SCHOOLS INFORMATION

Jenny Powell takes part in the Writers in Schools programme. She is happy to work with any age group over 5 years, and is willing to discuss being a storyteller and a poet. She can give an introduction and talk, a reading and Q&A session, a poetry performance, and can take creative writing workshops, poetry workshops, and a performing poetry session. She would prefer to work with groups of 8-14 students with a maximum of one full class. She is able to travel outside of her region for school visits.