Jenny Bornholdt

Read Jenny Bornholdt's The Rocky Shore (2008) in one sitting, laughing out loud, and when I'd finished surprised myself by having a proper cry, unusual for me, not sure why...

Her writing is without pretence. Clear and simple, like a child telling a truth, instantly evident. Hard to achieve.

Jenny Bornholdt's book is pleasingly done, the inside of the cover is a pure pale green, the paper is the creamy, slightly rough paper which suits poetry.

I read from the book to the women in my sewing circle, dipping in here and there for 'good bits', worried about imposing on them - but they laughed together at the right places - so stopped while the going was good. Later I looked up and one of them was sitting with her nose in the book.
The reading was difficult - I couldn't speak the line breaks.

She often uses what other people say, sets them up nicely in the poem, you can have fun with her. I felt invited into her thoughts all the way through, an honour, to share intimacy. Her appraisal of a builder or plumber who said "Smells of soup, have you got a bacon hock in there?"

The loss of her father, the fear for the child - those are in the background, touched upon, left for you to think about. I shall re-read it and discover what it is that made me cry - probably the writing about Nigel Cox.

He once came to speak to a class I was in. He knew then that he was dying - such a sad man - but we didn't, we were so chuffed he was there, in his beautiful foreign, brightly striped shirt. After reading his diary from Berlin, Phone Home Berlin, I thought, he must have seemed like a mystery to the Germans, they will have liked his manner so much, the gentleness and ability to get things done without being authoritarian, very Kiwi.

Jenny Bornholdt was a Poet Laureate of New Zealand, and this book won the Montana Award in poetry in 2009.… (plus d'informations)